Bombay HC refuses immediate relief for actor Sheezan Khan in Tunisha Sharma case

The single-judge bench will hear the bail plea on February 15. The division bench posted further hearing on his plea to quash the FIR for February 17.

The division bench had asked the Maharashtra police to bring the case diary. They opposed Khan’s plea and submitted the case diary stating that the investigation was progressing.

Chief Public Prosecutor Aruna Pai, for police, submitted that even CCTV footage showed that Sharma was normal before Khan went into the room and that she looked “very disturbed” after he came out.

The bench said that it would examine if the investigation was progressing in the right direction and if the ingredients of section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code are made out.

Pai then said statements under Criminal Procedure Code section 164 were recorded and submitted in a sealed cover to the court.

Police submitted that they had strong evidence of Khan’s involvement in abetting the suicide and that phones seized from Khan, Sharma and another person had been sent to a forensic science laboratory, the report of which would be given in three weeks.

Sharma’s advocate told the bench that Khan, who is under judicial custody in the Thane Central Prison, had not pursued the separate bail plea and instead sought the relief in the plea to quash the FIR.

Last month, the Vasai sessions court rejected a bail plea moved by Khan.

Sharma (21), who acted in the TV show “Ali Baba: Dastaan-E-Kabul” along with Khan, was found dead in the washroom on the set of a Hindi serial near Vasai, on the outskirts of Mumbai, on December 24 last year. She was in a relationship with Khan, but they broke up. He was arrested by the Waliv police the next day on the charge of abetting her suicide.

Khan has filed two pleas in the high court—one seeking bail and the other for quashing the FIR. In the first plea, Khan said that to “enter into a relationship and break up are normal facets of life, and if two persons in such a relationship terminate, then the mere fact that the other person commits suicide does not justify the offence registered under IPC section 306 (abetment of suicide) with its consequences of arrest and custody”.

In the second plea, Khan requested that a chargesheet not be filed against him in the case and sought an interim release from jail.

Khan said there was nothing to suggest that “he had done any act with the specific criminal intention, of compelling Sharma to die by suicide”. He also said that Sharma was a mental health patient under medical care and “proximate to die by suicide”.

Since both of them were actors and belonged to different religions, there had been a lot of media attention, Khan said, adding that he was a “victim of several allegations being spread in media by persons who do not wish well for him, and want him to take the fall for what is otherwise a plain suicide case”.