Aug. 29: Police today dropped in at the Guwahati home of Upendra Kumar Bora and Durga Ranee Bora to see how the octogenarians were doing in the absence of their grandson who is in Mumbai in connection with the Sheena murder case.

The house is the only piece of property that the Boras have, according to some neighbours. Upendra Kumar Bora used to run a guesthouse called Chanakya Inn in a part of the two-storeyed house but it shut down some years ago.

As Mikhail left for Mumbai yesterday, the government had sent a nurse to look after the couple. A second nurse arrived today.

"The house was very messy and we discovered several empty liquor bottles there. Things were scattered everywhere, the house had been shut for quite a long time," one of the nurses said today. "We found stacks of empty liquor bottles inside the house," she said.

Besides the nurses, no other help has been forthcoming for the Boras. With a media vigil that has lasted practically round the clock ever since the story of the grisly murder and Indrani's arrest on August 25 broke, neighbours have stayed away.

In Tezpur, 180km upstream of the Brahmaputra on its north bank from Guwahati, Upendra Kumar Bora's younger brother Puren Bora, 64, said he knew hardly anything about Upendra Kumar. "I was in Class VI when Upendra left home, he must have been about 22 then," he said this afternoon.

They were five brothers and their father Hiteshwar Bora was a postmaster at the Tezpur head post office, Puren said. "Upendra Kumar is the eldest of the five of us," he said. "After he left home, he worked with Kirloskar for about seven years in Guwahati. It was during that time that he married Durga Ranee who is from North Lakhimpur, also on the north bank of the Brahmaputra but about 380km from Guwahati.