No one would have known of the sheena bora murder case, if Indrani Mukherjea’s driver Shyamwar Rai had kept quiet. His ‘confession” to the police triggered an investigation into what has become one of the most high profile murder cases in india in the last decade. Initially soon after the murder of sheena bora, Indrani was very careful, took all measures possible to ensure that the matter was never discovered.
Till 2014, Indrani took all possible measures to ensure that the death would not be discovered, paying sheena’s brother mikhail bora Rs 40000 per month to ensure that he did not ask questions, sending emails from the fake email id created for sheena bora, keeping the facebook and linkedin account active. However after two years, she may have become confident that her fraud would never be discovered, so she also dismissed her driver Shyamvar Rai, who she was paying Rs 15000 a month. She told him that she was planning to leave Mumbai and did not need his services.
In a large city like Mumbai, while people who are employees have a lot of freedom and privacy, self employed and small business owners are extremely vulnerable and are always under scrutiny by powerful officials who want to exploit them . After he was dismissed from his job, shyamvar rai had to work as a self employed, rickshaw driver and soon the illegal weapon in his possession was known to others due to the constant surveillance.
Once shyamvar rai was caught, the police could easily get all the details from him as he was a driver who was not used to criminal activities. If he had still been working with Indrani his employer would have had the clout to get him released. As a self employed person, shyamvar rai’s main concern was to save himself, so he did whatever he could. There was no connection with Indrani now, so he provided all the information to the police
Like most migrants to Mumbai, Shyamwar Rai did not have a social network, and at the court hearings for the sheena bora murder case, his poverty and lack of support system immediately has become obvious. While Indrani Mukherjea, Sanjeev Khanna had relatively high profile lawyers like Gunjan Mangla, Hrishikesh Mundergi, Shreyansh Mithare to defend them in court, from media reports, the relatively poor shyamvar rai had no legal help.
Indrani Mukherjea became rich and powerful because she understands rich and powerful men very well, how to make them do what she wanted. However she failed to understand the weakness and vulnerability of poor men like her driver shyamvar rai who provided services to her,and as a result her almost “perfect” murder of sheena bora was exposed.