‘Actor’s step-dad killed her and 5 kin out of anger’

Mumbai: A sessions court that convicted actor Laila Khan’s stepfather, Parvez Tak, for murdering her and five of her family is likely to pronounce the sentence on Tuesday.
The chargesheet said Tak killed the six out of anger as he was not given a share of the money the family had received from business deals with a Dubai-based man known only as Shaikh.

Last week, Ujjwal Nikam, BJP’s Mumbai North-Central Lok Sabha nominee, had resigned from 29 cases across the state in which he was appointed special public prosecutor.This was among his eight cases in the city. Nikam had examined over 40 witnesses including Laila’s mother Selina Patel’s former husbands -- Nadir Patel and Asif Shaikh.
It was the prosecution’s case that with the help of an absconding accused, Shakir Hussain, Tak hatched a conspiracy to murder Selina, her four children-- Reshma alias Laila, twins Imran and Zara Patel, Azmina and niece Reshma alias Talli.
The police had alleged that in Feb 2011, Tak persuaded Laila and her family to visit their Igatpuri farmhouse on the pretext of finding Kashmiri alliances for her and her sisters. The chargesheet in the case said that Tak killed them on Feb 8, 2011.
Amid the evidence recovered from the farmhouse were details of the family’s bank accounts and six passbooks.
The case came to be filed after the six went missing from Mumbai, after which Laila’s father, Nadir, filed a missing persons complaint at Oshiwara police station. The recovery of two MUVs belonging to Laila from Jammu & Kashmir triggered speculation that she could be in that state. Another theory that did the rounds said she was in Dubai with her ‘husband’, Sonu.
However, Tak, a road contractor from Kishtwar in J&K, and the third husband of Laila’s mother emerged as prime suspects after the seizure of the two MUVs. The crime branch recovered six skeletons from a pit in the farmhouse in Jul 2012. The police had submitted that Tak had led them to the bodies. DNA evidence proved that they were the victims. In the 984-page chargesheet Crime Branch booked Tak and Hussain.