Mumbai court rejects CBI plea seeking further probe in Jiah Khan suicide case

Mumbai | A special CBI court here on Thursday dismissed petitions seeking permission for further probe in Bollywood actor Jiah Khan’s alleged suicide. The trial in the case is already underway. The petitions had been filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation and Jiah’s mother Rabiya Khan. Actor Sooraj Pancholi was booked for alleged abetment to suicide in the case and is now out on bail. The CBI had sought permission from the court to send a “dupatta’’, purportedly used by Jiah to hang herself, to the Central Forensic Laboratory at Chandigarh for further analysis. It also wanted to send seized cellphones to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US to retrieve “deleted’’ chats between Jiah and Pancholi. Pancholi’s lawyer Prashant Patil objected to the petitions, saying the matter has already been decided by the High Court and Supreme court. Special judge AS Sayyad dismissed the pleas after hearing the arguments. Jiah Khan, best known for her performance in the film Nishabd, was found hanging at her residence on 3 June, 2013. Sooraj Pancholi, son of Bollywood couple Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab, was allegedly in a relationship with her. The CBI alleged that a three-page note written by Jiah which was seized by the Mumbai Police (who probed the case in the beginning) spoke about her and Sooraj’s “intimate relationship” and “her physical abuse and mental and physical torture” by Sooraj which led to the suicide.