Peter had called senior IPS officer for 'help'

MUMBAI: When the Khar police went to arrest Indrani Mukerjea at her Worli residence on August 25, she called her husband Peter, who called an IPS officer now holding a top position with the city police. This officer asked Peter to contact joint commissioner of police (law & order) Deven Bharti. A source said that Bharti, upon learning that the call concerned a murder case, didn't act on Peter's request for help.
Bharti's name was also mentioned by Peter Mukerjea, who told the CBI that he had approached him in 2012, while he was additional commissioner (crime), with a missing complaint regarding Sheena. Bharti told TOI that Peter had indeed called him to seek his help in tracing Sheena.
Bharti, whose statement has been recorded by the CBI, said, "Peter had verbally sought help to trace Sheena. He gave me her cell number, which I asked the anti-extortion cell (AEC) to look into. AEC officials intimated that the number was switched off. A few days later Peter informed me that Sheena had been traced in the US."
Bharti told TOI he followed the standard operating procedure for officers and did not do anything wrong.
A source said that based on Bharti's statement, the CBI went ahead and arrested Peter on the grounds that he had some knowledge of the crime as he tried to mislead the police when he told Bharti that Sheena was in the US, though she evidently was not there.
But questions have been raised as to why Bharti did not put the matter on record after Indrani was arrested and Peter was grilled by the then police commissioner Rakesh Maria. On September 7, during Peter's interrogation, when he was reportedly slapped by a senior officer, and asked what efforts he had made to trace Sheena, Peter said he had approached Bharti with a missing complaint, which, a source said, caused "tremendous embarrassment" to the interrogating team.
CBI officials claimed that on one hand Peter toed his wife's line that Sheena had settled in the US, and on the other he approached Bharti to mislead the police.