A court in Mumbai has charged the Bollywood actor Sooraj Pancholi with abetting the suicide of his former partner, the actor Jiah Khan, who was found dead in her apartment by her mother in June 2013.
Khan had made a sensational debut in the industry, starring opposite the veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan in the 2007 film Nishabd.
Khan was 25 and had been in a relationship with Pancholi for nine months when she killed herself. According to Indian police and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) she had spent two days with Pancholi in his flat before her death. Pancholi was 22 at the time.
Khan’s mother, Rabiya Khan, who lives in London, has long claimed her daughter was murdered and has fought to have Pancholi convicted.
Pancholi’s parents, Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab, are well known in Bollywood and have fought equally ferociously to defend their son, arguing that Khan was emotionally unstable and had attempted suicide in the past.
Until now the case had moved around the Mumbai police, the CBI and the courts without making progress.
In September, in an open letter to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, Rabiya Khan alleged that CBI officials had deliberately distorted certain information. “All forensic evidence strongly suggests that Jiah was murdered and then hanged to make it look like suicide,” she wrote.
Rabiya Khan’s latest request to the Mumbai high court was that, given alleged lapses in the CBI’s investigation, the court should authorise an independent investigation in which she could present the opinion of independent forensic experts she had hired to look into her daughter’s death.
The court did not agree to this request but said she could present all the material she had to a sessions court that would take on the case. The case was assigned to a special women’s court.
On Tuesday, the judge in the women’s court, Kavita Shirbhate, formally charged Pancholi with abetment to suicide. Pancholi was present and pleaded not guilty.
Rabiya Khan’s lawyer, Swapnil Ambure, said the trial would “give us a chance to present the opinions of independent experts who say there is enough evidence to show that it was a staged hanging and therefore is a case of homicide, not suicide”.
