Lost love

Siddhartha Das, who claims to be the biological father of Sheena and Mikhail, now lives in Dum Dum in Kolkata with his wife, Babli, and a 17-year-old son. He met Indrani in Shillong in 1986 and Das said he was in a live-in relationship with her till 1989. “We did not marry. She was studying in a college in Shillong and lived in the city. We came to know each other through common friends. Then we had a live-in relationship and I had stayed at her residence in Sundarpur. Her parents accepted our relationship,” he said.

He has a story about how they named their daughter Sheena. “We watched the movie Sheena: Queen of the Jungle at a movie hall in Shillong,” he said. “We loved the movie and the time we spent intimately in the cinema hall. When the movie was over, we decided that if we had a baby girl we would name her Sheena.” Their son Mikhail, he said, was named after the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

He said Indrani left him in 1989. “She became frustrated about my poor income and yearned for a better life,” he said. “As she did not contact us, I went looking for her. She asked me to get out of her life.”

Also read: I want Indrani to be hanged

Though Siddhartha wanted to take his children back, Indrani's parents did not let him do so. He said he maintained links with Sheena for a while, but had no idea that Indrani was in Kolkata and lived there for ten years after marrying Sanjeev Khanna. He called her devious and someone who can cause immense pain to others. He said he never knew who Peter Mukerjea was and that Indrani had married Peter. “I am a simple man, leading a simple life,” he said.