Bombay High Court allows Sooraj Pancholi’s intervention application

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Wednesday allowed Bollywood actor Sooraj Pancholi’s application to intervene in the petition filed by late actress Jiah Khan’s mother Rabia seeking further investigation by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into her daughter’s death. Pancholi is facing trail for abetment to suicide in the case involving Jiah’s death.

The investigation into Jiah’s death was handed over to the CBI on Rabia’s request, but she challenged the CBI’s chargesheet, which said that it was a suicide and Pancholi was responsible for Jiah taking the extreme step.

While hearing the petition that Rabia had filed, the high court, in February this year, had stayed the trial against Pancholi.

However, last month, Pancholi filed an intervention application seeking the stay on the trial to be vacated saying he has every right to face a “free, fair and expeditious trial”. In his application, Pancholi alleged that the petitioner (Rabia) has concealed vital information pertaining to Jiah’s disturbed childhood and also the fact that she (Jiah) had attempted to kill herself when she was young.

Relying on the opinion of private forensic experts, Rabia is claiming that Jiah did not take her life by hanging from the fan as claimed in the investigation, but was murdered.

The division bench of Justices R.V. More and Shalini Phansalkar Joshi allowed Pancholi to intervene in the petition and posted the matter for hearing on January 14.

Pancholi was arrested for abetting Jiah’s suicide on June 10, 2013, but released on July 2 after the high court granted him bail. The case was transferred to the CBI by the HC in July 2014 on Rabia’s petition that the police was not investigating it properly.

Decoding dates

• June 3, 2013: Jiah Khan was found hanging in her Juhu apartment.
• June 4, 2013: Post-mortem was performed on Jiah’s body.
• June 7, 2013: Jiah’s family found a letter written by her and termed it to be a suicide note.
• June 10, 2013: Sooraj Pancholi was arrested on charges of abetment of suicide.
• June 13, 2013: The post-mortem report on her body confirmed that Jiah had committed suicide by hanging.