A city court on Thursday remanded Suraj Pancholi, arrested on charges of abetting the suicide of his girlfriend and actress Jiah Khan, in judicial custody till June 27, after rejecting the prosecution’s plea for extending his police custody.
In a development that paved way for the Suraj’s possible bail, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Seema Jadhav rejected a plea made by the Juhu police seeking extension of custody of the lone accused in the Jiah Khan suicide case for some more days and sent him to judicial custody for two weeks.
As she remanded the accused in judicial custody, the Magistrate did not see merit in the prosecution’s argument that the police had come across the word “rape” in the six-page letter purportedly written by Jiah to her boyfriend and that they wanted to probe in this direction.
Similarly, the prosecution’s another argument that Suraj had deleted some messages from his Blackberry phone after learning about Jiah’s suicide and that the police needed more time to retrieve the messages and probe if they threw any light on her death, did not cut ice with the court.
Thirdly, the prosecutor also told the court that two letters were recovered from a servant of the Pancholi family and the police required to probe whether Suraj had written these to Jiah, and take samples of Suraj’s handwriting to prove that he wrote those letters to his girlfriend.
Contesting the prosecution’s application for an extension in police custody of his client, Suraj’s counsel Zameer Khan argued that the police had already recorded the statements of all witnesses including Jiah’s mother Rabiya Khan, sister and Pancholi family’s servant.
Khan also told the court that the police had completed all their searches at Pancholi’s house and the family had fully cooperated with the investigation, handing them letters, a laptop, I-pad, and Suraj’s mobile phone.
Khan said the exchange of letters between Suraj and Jiah were an offshoot of mutual trust and love between them, and hence Suraj’s custodial interrogation was not necessary. Accepting Khan’s argument, the court remanded Suraj in judicial custody till June 27.
Within hours after the court remanded Suraj in judicial custody, the defence lawyer moved the Sessions Court for bail to his client. “We have filed a bail application before the Sessions Court on after judicial custody was granted to Suraj,” Khan said, In a related development, the police on Thursday submitted an autopsy report before the court which showed that there were no external injuries on Jiah Khan’s body.
In effect, the autopsy report seeks to negate the Jiah’s mother Rabiya Khan’s allegation that Suraj had assaulted her daughter when the latter met him hours before she hanged herself from the ceiling fan at her Juhu residence on the night of June 3.