MUMBAI: Eleven months after her disappearance, the J&K police arrested Parvez Tak and Aasif Shaikh last month for kidnapping Pakistan-origin Bollywood startlet, Laila Khan and her family. Now, after a lot of interrogation Tak has claimed that all the missing people were killed for money and property in February 2011. Initially, Tak had said that Laila and family had escaped to Dubai on fake passports, but police found no corroborating evidence in airport entries.
Amongst the missing people were her mother Shelina Patel, aged 50, her elder sister Hazmima, twin siblings Zara and Imran and a friend. However, the police have not found any bodies. Gareeb Dass, Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Doda-Ramban range, J &K police has said, “Unless we get the bodies, we cannot for sure say.” He added, “We cannot give further details as the probe is in progress.”
Laila Khan, whose real name is Reshma Patel, was last seen in Wafa (2008) with actor Rajesh Khanna. The family was in Mumbai in their Oshiwara home. On the night of 30 January 2011, they were allegedly driving from Mumbai to their holiday home in Igatpuri. The last call records of her mobile phone that the police have been able to obtain show her location as Nashik, after which her phone has been switched off. It is somewhere in between these two locations that the family was kidnapped, and apparently murdered a few days later.
Parvez Tak, a local forest contractor, Laila’s step father and suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba member, went underground after a SUV belonging to Laila was recovered from his place in Kishtwar town, J&K on 28 May this year. The Mitsubishi Outlander, with a Maharashtra registration number, was parked inside a shop, which had been taken on rent by Tak. This was the starting point of insight into what really happened. Incidentally, Laila had come under investigation in the Delhi High Court blast probe after it emerged that this same Mitsubishi Outlander, which was registered in her mother’s name, was used for ferrying explosives by terrorists.
The motive behind the murders is still unclear. A team from the crime branch department from Mumbai has left for Kishtwar, and will take custody of Tak in Laila’s murder case. He will be brought to Maharashtra to help locate bodies of Laila and her family members.
