Mikhael Bora (Right) at Dispur police station in Assam.
For two years, Mikhael Bora says, he waited for news of his elder sister, Sheena, who, according to their mother, was studying in the US. "From my Facebook account, I've tried to send her message. But there was no reply. Her number was off. Every number was off."
Mr Bora, 24, says he did not let things lie, hectoring his mother at every available opportunity to put him in touch with Sheena, heaping new tension onto a relationship with the wobbliest of foundations.
"She told me directly on my mouth that 'stop irritating me, I've told you again and again she is in the US, she wants to get settled there. Then she will come back. And for that I cannot give you any contact of her'" he was reportedly told.
Neither of the Bora children were allowed to refer to Indrani Mukerjea as their mother. After they were born, Ms Mukerjea entrusted them to her parents who live in Guwahati. She married a second time, and then a third, always referring to her offspring as her younger brother and sister.
The cover was blown earlier this week, when Ms Mukerjea was arrested in Mumbai on charges of murdering Ms Bora in April 2012. The police claims she has confessed to the killing. Mr Bora says he has no doubt that "I am the next target" and that his mother is guilty. "If the police will come today, I will give the evidence to the police right away. 100%. Because she was my elder sister. I want justice for my sister," he said before he was interrogated by the Mumbai Police in Guwahati, where he still lives with Ms Mukerjea's parents in a big house in a rich neighbourhood. Ms Mukerjea, he told NDTV, had warned him last year that if he did not stop seeking information on Ms Bora, she would stop sending money to his grandparents and him.
Mr Bora has, in the last 24 hours, been a loquacious and willing interviewee, eager to justify his inaction in alerting the police to his sister's protracted and conspicuously silent absence. They were close till 2006 when she moved to Mumbai to study at the famous Xavier's College. Ms Bora lived then with Ms Mukerjea and her husband, Peter, once a powerful television executive who headed the Star Group in India. In 2007, the couple set up the INX Media Group in Mumbai which owns, among other TV channels, news broadcaster 9X. Ms Mukerjee was the Group CEO. Then came allegations of embezzlement and an exit in 2009.
Mr Bora says he last saw his sister in December 2011, when she returned to Guwahati for a school friend's wedding. By then, she was substantially involved with Mr Mukerjea's son from an earlier marriage, Rahul, a relationship that chafed all stake-holders other than the young couple. "Peter Mukerjea once spoke to me about (it), I told them that it's a family issue," Mr Bora told NDTV yesterday. "She's a girl, she can have an affair, I am no one to stop her," he said.
Ms Mukerjea, the police says, murdered Ms Bora along with her driver, Shyam Rai, and her second husband, Sanjeev Khanna, with whom she has a daughter named Vidhie. All three have been arrested. Rahul and Peter Mukerjea have been interrogated in Mumbai.