A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Thursday rejected pleas of the CBI and that of actor Jiah Khan’s mother for further probe in her daughter’s abetment to suicide case in which actor and then partner Suraj Pancholi is an accused.
The pleas were with respect to sending the dupatta used by Khan for committing suicide, to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh for further examination and to retrieve deleted chats between her and Pancholi from their blackberry messenger phones.
The agency intended to send it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) forensic laboratory in the US. The messages contain conversations the duo had, shortly before Khan's death.
The CBI court had heard arguments over the pleas freshly after the case was assigned to it last month. A sessions court that was conducting the case earlier had directed that it be transferred to a special CBI court. That court had already extensively heard the pleas.
In 2017, the Bombay High Court had rejected Khan’s mother’s petition for a fresh investigation by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the case. She had said in her petition that the Juhu police that had first probed the case, had not considered the possibility of it being a case of murder. The case was transferred to the CBI in July 2014.
On June 3, 2013, the actor’s mother Rabia Khan had found her dead in her Juhu residence. Pancholi was arrested a few days later and released on bail the following month. He is facing trial for abetment to suicide.
