Yet another twist has knotted up Bollywood actor Jiah Khan's suicide case. On Monday night, hours after her boyfriend Sooraj Pancholi was arrested for abetting her suicide, the Juhu police searched his house and discovered five love letters written by Jiah to him.
While producing Sooraj in Andheri Metropolitan Court, the police asked for his custody to investigate and verify the contents of these letters. The court granted them his custody for two days till June 13, after the prosecution argued that his interrogation was necessary following the allegations of threat, assault and rape against him by the actor in the 6-page note discovered three days after her suicide.
Sooraj Pancholi being produced in Andheri Court in connection with Jiah Khan's suicide on Tuesday. Pic/Nimesh Dave
In his statement to the police, Sooraj has accepted that he had beaten up Jiah, who under pressure from him even aborted their child at a Juhu-based hospital. Jiah had spoken about her pregnancy to many of her friends, and now the police are going to question them as well.
The defence lawyer argued against Sooraj's police custody, saying, `Why did the victim's mother bring the suicide note three days after the incident? Why was she mum when she came to know that Sooraj was beating her daughter? My client is innocent. He has been framed.` But the court wasn't convinced.
Police sources said that 'I love you' has been mentioned several times in three of the letters recovered from Sooraj's house, while the content of the other two is the same as that of the six-page note in which Jiah related her overwrought relationship that formed the basis of Sooraj's arrest.
Probe broadens
According to the Juhu police, the handwriting on the 6-page note matches that on the five letters found with Sooraj at first glance. `We have sent all the letters recovered from Sooraj's house to handwriting experts to verify if they were penned by Jiah. On the basis of primary information, we will call all the people related to this issue.
We have met Jiah's family members personally to get more information. We will interrogate Sooraj's servant Deva, who last visited her house with a bouquet sent by him, right before her death,` said Additional Commissioner of Police (West) Vishwas Nangre-Patil.
`We have recovered Jiah Khan's BlackBerry phone with the help of which we will come to know whom she had forwarded the message to in her last moments. To open her BlackBerry and WhatsApp messengers, we are taking help from IT experts because only she knew the password,` added Nangre-Patil.
Reliable sources from Juhu police station said Jiah's mother, Rabia had given a statement to police, stating that Sooraj had promised to marry Jiah, but when she became pregnant, he started ignoring her, at the behest of his actor father, Aditya.
`In primary investigations, we did not find any role of Aditya Pancholi in this case. We are taking legal help to add section 498 (harassment) to the charges against Sooraj to make the case watertight,` a police officer said, requesting anonymity.
Police are also probing which hospital the actor went to for the abortion, so they can record the statement of the doctor concerned.
Cops are awaiting the medical report to find out if the bruises on her face at the time she was found hanging were caused because someone had beaten her before her death. Sooraj, son of actor couple Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab, was arrested on Monday under IPC section 306 for abetting Jiah's suicide, a week after she hanged herself from the ceiling fan at her Juhu apartment on June 3.
