‘But how did my child die’: Jiah Khan’s mother reacts to judgement, will approach high court

A special CBI court in Mumbai on Friday acquitted actor Sooraj Pancholi, accused of abetting the suicide of his then actor-girlfriend Jiah Khan in 2013, citing lack of evidence against him. Now, her mother Rabia Khan has reacted to the verdict. (Also read: Jiah Khan case verdict: Sooraj Pancholi acquitted of suicide abetment charges)

“The charge of abetment to suicide has gone. But how did my child die? This is a case of murder…will approach the high court,” she said. Rabia has been fighting the case for years and had been refuting the prosecution’s case that this was a case of suicide and claimed that her daughter was killed.

Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court judge A S Sayyad on Friday said due to lack of evidence, the court holds Sooraj not guilty. Sooraj, the son of actor couple Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab, was present in the court with his mother at the time of the verdict. Sooraj was arrested in the case in June 2013 and released on bail in July 2013.

Jiah (25), an American citizen, was found dead at her Juhu home in Mumbai on June 3, 2013. Police later arrested Sooraj on the basis of a six-page letter, purportedly written by the Bollywood actor. In his final statement to the court on April 12, 2023, Sooraj Pancholi had said that he had been booked in a false case and that he was the victim of a false prosecution and persecution. In that statement, he said he had broken down when he heard about Jiah’s death and said, “I had lost the most important person of my life and the woman whom I truly loved.”

In September last year, the court had said that Rabia was trying to delay judgement in the case by trying to portray Jiah’s death as murder. “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 a PTI report. Her approach appeared 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.