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Journalism of Courage
The Bombay High Court Thursday asked the Mumbai police how much longer would it take for its inquiry into the death of celebrity manager Disha Salian to complete. Salian died on June 8, 2020. Her father Satish had petitioned the high court in March, alleging that his daughter was murdered, while the police had then submitted that its probe thus far had shown that she had died by suicide.
On Thursday, when the prosecutor submitted that the inquiry into the death was still ongoing, the division bench of Justice AS Gadkari and RR Bhonsale said, “It has been five years. Someone has died. You just have to ascertain if it was a suicide or culpable homicide.”
Public prosecutor Mankhunwar Deshmukh told the court that the police inquiry is being done minutely to rule out all possibilities.
The Malvani police had on June 9, 2020, registered an accidental death report and filed a closure report after an inquiry, stating that Salian had died by suicide, falling off a residential building in the western suburbs of Malad. Satish Salian, in his petition filed this year, sought a fresh investigation into the case, alleging the involvement of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray, and seeking a CBI probe.
Police then sought dismissal of the plea stating that an investigation by its Special Investigation Team in 2023, too, had been consistent with the findings of the earlier probe about Salian’s death caused by suicide.
The prosecutor told court on Thursday that the statements of Satish Salian, his wife, had been recorded in 2020 first and subsequently too, but they had said that they had no doubt or suspicion on anyone, stating that the petition was filed five years raising these allegations now.
The court sought to know if the police had handed over copies of the statements and other documents, legally permissible to share with Satish. It will hear the case again on December 11 to clarify the police’s stand on sharing the documents with Satish. Salian’s father had in his plea in 2025 claimed that his daughter had died under mysterious circumstances, alleging that she was raped and murdered, and claimed that there was a cover-up.
Thackeray, through an intervention application, had then said that these allegations were baseless and false and based on hearsay, without any evidence. Salian was also a former manager of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who had died by suicide at his Bandra residence on June 14, 2020. While there were allegations that the two deaths were linked, the CBI in a recent closure report which is yet to be accepted by the court, has said that Rajput’s death was a case of suicide.
