The curious case of Laila

Shelina’s second husband,Pervez Ahmed Tak,35,whom she married at Ratnagiri and whose wife and kids are at Kishtwar in J&K,also went missing around the same time. He was arrested on Thursday afternoon and is now being questioned by the Jammu and Kashmir police. Another man,Asif,allegedly Shelina’s live-in partner who may have introduced her to Pervez,is also missing. Pervez maintains they are alive,but hasn’t given the details yet. Investigators in Maharashtra,New Delhi and J&K are now trying to piece together leads and evidences to track the missing starlet and her family.

LAILA,THE STARRY-EYED

Laila’s father Nadir Shah Patel,an Aga Khani nearing his sixties,exports garments to the Indian diaspora in Tanzania,Kenya and Uganda. Laila,Hazmina and the twins are from his first marriage to Shelina,his neighbour in Golibar Naka in Santacruz with whom he fell in love in 1979. There are photos of a beautiful,demure Shelina in his wedding album.

Though police and many neighbours at Shelina’s Oshiwara house doubt him,Nadir says he still feels for the family. While Hazmina was his favourite,Laila was special for her attitude. The two girls always craved for a “hi-fi” lifestyle. They studied at Scholar’s Foundation at Panchgani while their father shuttled between East Africa,Bombay and Panchgani in his early days. Laila,who was born Reshma Patel,loved horses. A family picture shows her riding a horse with her father.

The extended family recalls her as a connoisseur of good food. They called her “chatpati” for her love of anything spicy and hot. Her love for food,together with her culinary skills,is something that director Rakesh Sawant,brother of reality star Rakhi Sawant,says he can vouch for. He recalls the chicken she would cook every time she invited the film crew to her place. “In Bangkok,when she saw cockroaches and bugs being roasted,she freaked out and threatened to walk out if I did not arrange Indian food,” he recalls. The family also recalls her love for driving,which,Nadir says,she inherited from Shelina.

The love for camera was something that Nadir gave his daughters. The camera fascinated the girls and they would take great efforts to look presentable every time their father clicked pictures. Family albums are full of pictures of Hazmina and Laila striking model poses—in front of mirrors,furniture sets,in Agra,and at family picnics. “They were always well behaved when the camera came out,” he recalls.

Hazmina,the eldest,chose to become a model and Laila took to acting. Hazmina too later ventured into movies with the screen name Afreen Khan. She made her debut in a Rakesh Sawant movie named Hello? Kaun Hai! The father did not approve of the girls’ choice,but the “camera’s pull” was strong. Nadir too had done cameos in the past and so had Laila’s grandfather. “I asked her mother (Shelina) one day why she had changed Reshma’s name to Laila Khan. Reshma sounded good. The mother and daughter also insisted on ‘Khan’ instead of ‘Patel’,saying the Khan name worked better in Bollywood. They never made sense,” he recalls. “Both Shelina and Laila were always high maintenance. They were into stylish clothes and lifestyle. It was a different world,” he says.

Laila’s stepmother and Nadir’s second wife,who didn’t want to be named,remembers noticing a change in Laila after she became an actor. “She became reserved and guarded. She changed. She didn’t want to be seen in Mira Road any more,” she says.

Rakesh Sawant says Laila did not have any friends. “She was always with her mother. Her Facebook profile was limited and now even that has been deleted,” he says.

Sawant believes the police got into action because of him. “I went to the police station as I had money riding on her. I was an affected party,” he says. In the middle of Wafaa,Sawant had signed Laila for two other movies,Jinnatt and April Fool. While April Fool is yet to go on the floors,he has already shot the first schedule of Jinnatt with Laila.

Sawant wants her back. “I am deeply affected by this case. My crew keeps asking me about their details. We have the other schedule to begin but the heroine is missing. Already,Rs 75 lakh is at stake and if we don’t find her,I will lose a lot of money. We cannot take anyone else,” he says.

With Wafaa,Sawant had become a friend to Laila. “She would not talk to anyone on the sets. She would do her bits and leave. She was very soft-spoken. I would always tell her to be loud. One incident that will always stay with me is when I told her we would have to take permission from Shelina as the scene required a nude back. She stared straight into my eyes and said,‘Am I the actress or my mother?’ I found her straight and practical,” he says. Sawant says he can’t say that about the family. “Hazmina had at least twice spoken about harassment by her mother and had even shown us some scars. There was talk of some property dispute but I never intervened as it was the family’s personal matter,” he says.

THE COMPANY SHELINA KEPT

Nadir,who now lives with his second wife and two daughters in Mira Road,insists that things got messy because of the men Shelina befriended. He recalls meeting Asif for the first time at Shelina’s brother’s funeral in 1993. Shelina introduced Asif to him as her cousin,but her mother denied this. While Nadir lived in Mira Road,Shelina and her children moved to Sunshine Apartments in Oshiwara with Asif. Today,the building’s society also wants to know the family’s whereabouts as the maintenance dues have gone up to more than Rs 1 lakh. Shelina had apparently told her neighbours in Sunshine Apartments that she was a widow.

While Shelina owns two flats,one each in Mira Road and Oshiwara,Laila owns a farmhouse at Igatpuri and Hazmina owns a shop at Lokhandwala. The police are not convinced that all the assets were raised with money earned from modelling and movies as Hazmina’s career was on a downslide and Laila hadn’t made a mark in Bollywood. The police are also probing allegations made by Nadir that Shelina’s men,Asif and Pervez,had moved into their Igatpuri farmhouse for a month before they went missing. Even after the family had gone missing,Asif continued to stay at Shelina’s Mira Road house till June 2011,after which he too went missing. “I am worried since Asif can forge Shelina’s signature. We found this out now,” says Nadir.Sawant says days before Laila disappeared,he got into a fight with her mother Shelina. “Pervez started taking calls on her phone. He started cancelling shoots and would not give me dates. I picked up a fight with Shelina and it was sorted out only after I paid the family a visit,” he says.

Sawant says he saw “Kashmiri men” twice when he visited Laila’s Oshiwara apartment and her Igatpuri farmhouse. “I have informed the ATS about them. They were the ones who were hosting the party with Laila at her Igatpuri farmhouse. She told me about investing money and making movies herself. I was cool. I thought I could do with some investors,” says Sawant.

PERVEZ,THE SHAPE-SHIFTER

Maran,a remote village 100 km away from Kishtwar in J&K,is all abuzz with the talk of scandal. Pervez Ahmed Tak,who was arrested by the J&K Police from Jammu on Thursday in connection with the disappearance of Laila Khan,is from this village.

He is said to have married Laila’s mother Shelina,though he was already married to Tasleema of Kishtwar and has two daughters,aged five and two. Tasleema delivered their third child at their home in Maran only two months ago. Villagers say a lady doctor,whom he is said to have married in the Valley in 2003,had complained to the police after she got to know that he was already married.

Pervez,a dropout from the local government school,could impress people with his good looks and smooth talk,says his former teacher Haji Mohammad Sharief.

After leaving school,Pervez worked as a carpenter along with his father Mohammad Amin till 2006,when he suddenly left the village. “We don’t know where he was from 2006 to 2008,except hearing from his family members that he was in Srinagar,Jammu or Delhi,’’ says Mohammad Iqbal Keen,former sarpanch of Bounjwan. “One day,he suddenly reappeared,wearing a suit,tie and sunglasses. He said he had got an NCP ticket to contest the 2008 assembly elections against sitting Congress MLA G M Saroori from Inderwal constituency. He spent lakhs on his election campaign only to get a little over 400 votes.’’

After losing the election,Pervez disappeared again. He is also said to have taken Rs 3 lakh from Mohammad Saleem of Kishtwar after promising him a government job. “He took me to the NCP’s office (in Delhi) where he went inside a room to meet someone and returned after nearly two hours,saying that I would have to shell out Rs 3 lakh for a job in NHPC. I paid the money and he gave me an appointment letter which turned out to be fake,’’ Saleem says.

Twice in the last few months,the Punjab Police have come looking for Pervez. He had allegedly cheated a family in Punjab by impressing them with videos of his 2008 assembly election campaign. Pervez also opened a ‘Yateem Trust’,ostensibly to provide shelter to orphans in Kishtwar town by raising donations. He fled after residents complained against him for making advances to women.

Pervez’s mother,however,denied any knowledge about his activities,saying that the family has not been in touch with him ever since he left home after losing the 2008 elections.

But the police have reasons to suspect that line. They seized the keys of a Scorpio,belonging to Laila’s family and abandoned in Jammu last year,from his father Mohammad Amin. Even the shop in Kishtwar town,from where a Mitsubishi Outlander registered in Shelina’s name was seized by the police early this month,was taken on a monthly rent of Rs 800 by Amin,ostensibly to run a furniture business here.

Pervez was in touch with his family and friends through VOIP (voice on Internet protocol) calls which are difficult to track. To arrest him,the police made one of his contacts call him to Jammu from Andhra Pradesh on the pretext of striking a deal.

Pervez claims he last saw Laila and her family at a Bandra restaurant,though he is not sure when. While he has not revealed much about Laila’s two cars in J&K,he has admitted to marrying Shelina. The wedding was kept under wraps as Shelina and Nadir are still married legally.