Peter and Indrani Mukerjea, the media professionals

Peter Mukerjea, ex-Star India CEO, who is hailed as the man who turned around Star India's fortunes when he took over way back in 1999, was on Wednesday questioned by the Mumbai Police after his wife,  Indrani Mukerjea was arrested for the murder of Sheena Bora, who Indrani claimed was her sister, but later accepted during a thorough interrogation, that Sheena was actually her daughter from her first marriage. The police have also arrested a Sanjeev Khanna, Indrani's first husband, as her accomplice. 

While the case gets murkier by the minute and the Police strive to find a motive amid claims of a property dispute, honour killing, fraudulent money, here's a break up of Peter Mukerjea and Indrani Mukerjea's timeline as media professionals.

Peter Mukerjea, the CEO; Indrani Mukerjea the HR Consultant, CEO

1993 - Peter Mukerjea worked with Ogilvy & Mather as an Account Director in New Delhi and London, and Needham Advertising as a Regional Group Account Director in Hong Kong, before he moved to STAR in 1993 as the Sales Director (India). He was stationed in Hong Kong at the time.

He was soon moved to India, where he helped establish the network's advertising sales division.

1996 – He took over the responsibility of the Middle East market, over and above his existing role at STAR.

1997 – Mukerjea was made Executive Vice President

1999 – Took over as the CEO of Star India

2002 – Mukerjea married HR consultant Indrani Bora. Indrani was an advertising professional for sometime in Kolkata, before becoming an HR Consultant.

At the time of her marriage, her biggest client as an HR consultant was the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Group.

2006 – The couple form INX Media and INX News – Indrani Mukerjea is the CEO.

Star India breaks up into two entities – Star Group and Star Entertainment India. Peter is made CEO Star Group. Rumours about his displeasure with the change in the company structure and change in position start floating.

2007 – In January, Peter puts in his papers, and quits as the CEO of Star Group. In an interview with rediff.com, soon after leaving the company where he spent 14 years, Peter had said that although he didn't quit due to the change of the company's structure, it was an event that had helped catalyse the move.

It was under his leadership that the channel launched its star property – Kaun Banega Crorepati. It was later deemed strange that he quit right before KBC was going to go on air after a major overhaul, now with actor Shah Rukh Khan as the host.

– Peter joins his wife at INX Media as Executive Chairman.

– The company gets funded by Singapore-based Temasak, Kotak Private Equities, New Vernon, Kotak, SREI Group and New Silk Route.

– Both, Peter and Indrani sell off 30% of their stake in the company to private equity players, NSR, Kotak Equity Fund, Temasek, and New Vernon.

2009 – Both, Peter and Indrani exit the company while it was fast running out of finances.

One blog post in Febuary that year had said that “9X, the general entertainment channel run by INX Media Pvt Ltd, has exceeded the window of credit it has with content providers by several months, according to sources at two production companies that are creditors. 9X has been doing reruns and has not had fresh content on its channel since production personnel went on strike in October. The post cited this rediff post for the quote.

"A highly placed source at Balaji Telefilms Ltd said the firm is owed more than Rs30 crore by INX Media and payments have not been forthcoming," the blog post said.

Indrani was quoted as saying that some payments were due, but every effort was being made to make the payments in tranches. “It’s not true that we are not paying anyone. Yes, there are some outstandings, but we are making payments every week little by little so over a period of time everyone will be paid,” she was quoted. 

Soon after, both the co-founders quit the company.

Both, Indrani an Peter Mukerjea are known to have allegedly syphoned off money from the company's investors. Temasak got the company audited soon after the global recession and found that they have syphoned off huge sums of money in the name of various family members.

According to bloomberg.com, after leaving INX Media, Peter served as a Director of joint venture companies ESPN STAR Sports, Hathway and Media content and  and Communications Services (India) for Star News.

In fact, when the news broke out, it was first alleged that Indrani had likely murdered her daughter Sheena over the syphoned money, which the latter had refused to return. However, since then, the reasons have shifted to a property dispute or a relationship that the victim had with Peter's son (from his previous marriage) and back to the fraudulent money. The exact motive of the murder isn't known yet.