Mumbai: Indrani Mukherjea made it to the headlines yet again as she returned to the JJ Hospital in Byculla with high grade fever on Wednesday, even before the mystery over her falling unconscious for 48 years three weeks ago could be solved.
The jail authorities informed the special CBI court that they could not produce Indrani, key accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, since she was unwell.
She was brought to the Byculla hospital in the evening and admitted to ward 10 on the first floor. Indrani, suffering from fever and body ache for seven days, was being attended to by jail doctors. Her blood was tested for malaria and dengue, but the reports were negative. Only her platelet count, 2.5 lakh four days ago, was steadily falling. It touched 65,000 on Wednesday. Suspecting dengue, the jail authorities called a team from JJ Hospital and decided to hospitalize her after a detailed examination.
Civic guidelines do not recommend hospitalization for a platelet count in the 60,000 range, but dean Dr T P Lahane said the prison officials were worried about her rapidly falling count. “Her blood samples have been taken. We will be checking for dengue and malaria. She is doing well otherwise,” he said, adding that her platelet count was healthy enough to not warrant any transfusion as yet. Lahane did not want to speculate whether it was dengue or some other viral ailment, and said that the test reports will be available by Thursday.
Inspector-general of prisons Bipin Kumar Singh said Indrani was unwell over the last one week. “She was under treatment inside the jail. Her fever subsided after initial treatment but it recurred on Tuesday,” he said. A few days ago, her husband Peter Mukherjea met her in jail, said a senior IPS officer.
A special CBI court had ordered that Indrani be produced on Wednesday after the CBI filed an application seeking Indrani’s voice sample to match with some audio recordings recovered during investigations. The jail didn’t produce her and informed the court she was unwell.
On October 19, the custody of Indrani, and her co-accused Sanjeev Khanna, her former husband, and her driver Shyamvar Rai had been extended till October 31.
Indrani is under the care of the same team of doctors who had treated her during her recent hospitalization. Mystery shrouds the incident with a leading private lab and the sole government lab providing contradictory findings over the reasons for her sudden unconsciousness.
