A high-society mother allegedly killed her daughter and faked her life online for three years.

A twisted high-society honour killing, in which a glamorous former media executive allegedly murdered her daughter and faked her life online for three years, has captivated India.

Sheena Bora was 22, young and beautiful. She had a good job and was in a relationship when she purportedly unexpectedly packed up and moved to America without telling family or friends in July 2012.

She sent a letter to her Mumbai landlord, a resignation letter to her boss and text messages from the US to let people know she had started a new life.

Over the next few years, she regularly posted pictures on Facebook and updated her LinkedIn profile.

Only, it wasn’t really her.

Sheena was strangled, doused in petrol and set alight back in 2012, before her body was stuffed in a suitcase and buried in a forest outside Mumbai – allegedly by her mother, 43-year-old Indrani Mukerjea, and her mother’s ex-husband, The Telegraph reports.

Her family is accused of masterminding her twisted death and carrying on her fake online life for three years.

The alleged murderer’s high-flying TV mogul husband, Peter Mukerjea, says he was “dumbstruck” by the allegations and the revelation that Ms Bora was actually his wife’s daughter, not her younger sister as she had claimed.

“I feel like I have been kept in the dark about major parts of my marriage for 15 years,” the 59-year-old said.

But the sordid tale came undone as Ms Mukerjea’s driver and ex-husband, Sanjeev Khanna, reportedly confessed his role in the grisly murder to police, before taking them to the jungle and uncovering Ms Bora’s remains.

Police also allege that social media messages falsely showed Ms Bora was alive and well stemmed from an IP address used by Ms Mukerjea. Ms Bora’s brother, Mikhail, is also accused of sending messages from her social media accounts.

Ms Bora had been in a relationship with her step-sibling, Rahul, Mr Mukerjea’s son from an earlier marriage.

Though they were not blood relations, their relationship infuriated their parents – a point of tension that police claim provided the perfect motive for murder.

“It was an honour killing because Sheena was having an affair with Rahul, which was not liked by Indrani,” deputy police commissioner Dhananjay Kulkarni told AFP.

“The prima facie evidence suggests this was the reason for the murder.”

But questions have been raised about whether Ms Bora had threatened to reveal that she was in fact her mother’s daughter, not her sister, to her high-society pals, The Telegraph reports.

Indian media reported Ms Mukerjea confessed to having her daughter murdered, but her lawyers argued in court that she was falsely implicated.

The secrets of the mysterious high-society murder are expected to play out in the courtroom, with Ms Mukerjea and Mr Khanna both charged over the murder late last month.

And an entire country will be waiting for answers.