Jiah Khan’s mother trying to delay trial by insisting it was murder case, says court: ‘Fair investigation done by CBI’
Jiah Khan’s mother Rabia Khan was trying to procrastinate and delay the trial by insisting her death was a homicide, Bombay High Court said, as per a new report.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had carried out a fair, impartial and thorough probe into the alleged suicide of the late actor, added the court. A copy of the detailed order was made available on Tuesday, as per the report. Jiah Khan was found dead in her Mumbai home in 2013.
The Jiah Khan death case is presently being probed by the CBI, which had charged actor Sooraj Pancholi, Jiah’s boyfriend at the time of her death, for abetting her suicide on June 3, 2013. The late actor’s mother Rabia had alleged that Jiah was murdered. The Bombay High Court in its order said a detailed investigation was carried out by the CBI from all possible angles and it concluded that it was a case of suicide.
The observations were made by a division bench of Justices A S Gadkari and M N Jadhav in its order dated September 12 dismissing a petition filed by Rabia Khan seeking a fresh probe into the case, preferably by the US-based FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), reported news agency PTI. The bench said it cannot go out of its territorial jurisdiction and direct the FBI to conduct a probe into the case, added the report.
“Repeated insistence of the petitioner (Rabia Khan) to procure a finding from the court that death of the victim (Jiah Khan), in this case, was homicidal and not suicidal is a clear indication of procrastinating the trial,” the court said, as per the PTI report. Her approach appears to circumvent the due process of law, the court added. “This conduct of the petitioner amounts to unnecessarily procrastinating and delaying the trial which is in progress before the trial court. It appears that petitioner wants this court to return a finding in her favour that the death of the victim was homicidal and not suicidal, even before the trial is over,” the judges said.
“Prima facie it does appear that a totally impartial, fair and transparent investigation is made by the CBI in a thorough manner,” the court said. The judges further said in court that every angle of medical evidence and circumstantial evidence, the conduct of the accused and/or cause of the incident, everything was re-considered with a fresh angle to ascertain and verify whether it can be a case of ‘homicidal death’ and then only after confirming that it was a case of suicidal nature, the CBI had filed its further report (supplementary charge sheet).