Former media executive Indrani Mukerjea on Monday submitted a letter to a special court in Mumbai, claiming she has reason to believe that her daughter Sheena Bora is alive, India Today reported. Mukerjea is currently in jail in connection with Bora’s alleged murder.

In a letter to the Central Bureau of Investigation last month, Mukerjea had made the same claims. She has now filed an application in the matter before a special CBI court. On Monday, the court directed the CBI to file its response. The matter will next be heard on February 4.

Mukerjea, in her application, has said that a fellow inmate at the Byculla women’s prison in Mumbai had told her that she had seen Bora alive at the Dal Lake in Srinagar in end-June or in July. The inmate whom Mukerjea referred to is former police inspector Asha Korke, who is in jail in relation to an extortion case.

According to the application, Korke saw a young woman at the lake and believed that she looked familiar. The former police inspector then approached the woman and asked her if she was Sheena Bora, to which the woman replied in the affirmative, Mukerjea has said, according to PTI.

Mukerjea claimed that Korke had tried to convince Bora to come forward in public, so that her parents could be set free. Bora reportedly refused, saying that she had begun a new life.

Bora had allegedly been strangled by Mukerjea in a car on April 24, 2012. Her body was then burnt and dumped in a forest Maharashtra’s Raigad district. The case came to light in 2015, after which Mukerjea was arrested.

Investigators alleged that Indrani’s Mukerjea’s husband Peter Mukerjea, her former spouse Sanjeev Khanna and driver Shyamvar Rai were accomplices in the crime. All three of them had been arrested. Peter Mukerjea was released on bail in March 2020.

In 2016, Indrani Mukerjea’s driver Shyamvar Rai turned an approver in the case. In August, the CBI had told a special court in Mumbai that it has closed the investigation in the case.