A special CBI court on Thursday acquitted actor Sooraj Pancholi in the 2013 suicide case of his girlfriend Jiah Khan. Pancholi, 32, the son of actors Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab, has not made a dent after his debut as the lead in the remake of ‘Hero’ opposite Athiya Shetty in 2015.
He was charged on the basis of a six-page letter written by Khan, who was found dead in her Juhu home on June 3, 2013.
The Jiah Khan Case
Nafisa Rizvi Khan, 25, famous as Jiah, was found dead in her Mumbai flat in Sagar Sangeet apartments, Juhu, around midnight on June 3, 2013, sparking a huge sensation in Bollywood circles.
The tragedy took place hours after Sooraj had left her home after living with her for two days, and later the Juhu Police Station recovered a note left by Jiah.
In the note pointing the needle of suspicion at Sooraj, she had narrated her troubled relationship, the ordeal, intimacy, physical and mental abuse and tortures, allegedly perpetrated on her by the actor.
Based on the note, the Mumbai Police booked and arrested Sooraj under IPC Sec. 306 (abetment to suicide) on June 10, 2012, and he remained in jail for nearly a month till the Bombay High Court granted him bail of Rs 50,000, on July 1, 2013.
As Rabiya pursued the matter, a year later in July 2014, the Bombay High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), after which Aditya Pancholi hit back by slapping a Rs 100 crore defamation suit against Jiah’s mother.
The Mumbai Police probe in 2013 had concluded that it was a suicide as Sooraj had broken off their relationship, and her career was not going ahead. Subsequently the CBI also upheld the case as ‘suicide’ in February 2016.
Undeterred, she challenged the CBI investigation report in the high court which was dismissed.
In view of Rabiya’s continued allegations of ‘murder’ against Sooraj, the prosecution attempted to enhance the charges to rape and murder in 2017, and he was charged with ‘abetment to suicide’ in 2018.
In 2022, Rabiya moved the Bombay High Court seeking to reopen the case, suspecting alleged errors in the previous probe and other things, but her plea was rejected.
She reiterated the allegations that her daughter was “murdered” and sought an investigation afresh by an independent or special agency with help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as Jiah was a US national.
What is Abetment to Suicide
A person who ‘aids and abets’ another person’s suicide is punishable by imprisonment for up to ten years and a fine under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code. Suicide abetting is a non-bailable offence.
A person is guilty of abetment when:
1) He instigates someone to commit suicide (or)
2) He is part of a conspiracy to make a person commit suicide (or)
3) He intentionally helps the victim to commit suicide by doing an act or by not doing something that he was bound to do
According to Section 305 of the IPC, if any person under the age of eighteen, any insane person, any delirious person, any ‘idiot’, or any person intoxicated commits suicide, whoever aids and abets the commission of such suicide shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.
Why It’s a Hard Charge to Prove
The Supreme Court has said that “the person who is said to have abetted the commission of suicide must have played an active role by an act of instigation or by doing certain act to facilitate the commission of suicide”. The court further has defined instigation as “to goad, urge forward, provoke, incite or encourage to do an act”. The apex court has also impressed upon the need for scrupulous assessment of the evidence in order to find out whether the cruelty and harassment meted out to the victim had left the victim with no other alternative but to put an end to her life. Read News18’s full analysis on the topic
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