CBI FIR in Disha Salian case names Aditya Thackeray and others; Raut, Kadam react

The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a first information report in the death of Disha Salian, acting on directions from the Bombay High Court, more than six years after the former talent manager died. The court has also directed that a senior CBI officer be assigned to oversee the probe.

Disha Salian, who had worked as manager for actor Sushant Singh Rajput, died on 8 June 2020 after falling from a residential building in Mumbai's Malad area. Mumbai Police at the time treated it as an accidental death. Six days later, on 14 June 2020, Rajput was found dead at his home in Bandra. Because the two deaths came so close together, the public has for years speculated that they were connected, even though the two cases were investigated as separate matters.

Two days before the CBI registered its FIR, investigators recorded a statement from Disha's father, Satish Salian, in which he named several people and alleged a conspiracy behind his daughter's death. He has sought a full inquiry into claims that a false account was constructed to present her death as suicide, and that evidence was hidden, destroyed or altered. Satish Salian has said that the CBI's FIR itself names former Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray, actor Suraj Pancholi and actor Rhea Chakraborty.

A fuller list of names said to figure in the FIR has since emerged. Besides Aditya Thackeray, it is reported to include actors Dino Morea and Rohan Roy, personnel from Aditya Thackeray's security detail, Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik Chakraborty, former police officer Sachin Vaze, former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh and DCP Vishal Thakur. The then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and the then home minister Anil Deshmukh are also named, along with a number of police officers, forensic staff and doctors connected to the case. Officers attached to the Malvani police station, medical staff who conducted Disha's post mortem, officials of the Kalina Forensic Science Laboratory, and security guards at the Regent Galaxy building where she died are also said to fall within the scope of the investigation. Investigators have made clear that being named in the FIR is not evidence of guilt, and that each person's role will be weighed against documents and evidence as the probe proceeds.

The CBI had earlier examined Sushant Singh Rajput's death and closed that inquiry with a report describing it as suicide, a report that has still not come up for hearing in court. What the fresh investigation into Disha Salian's death turns up, and whether it touches the Rajput case, is now expected to draw close attention across Maharashtra.

The registration of the FIR set off a sharp political reaction. Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut, giving his first response, said the case was an extremely sensitive one and insisted that Aditya Thackeray had no connection whatsoever to Disha Salian's death. He said he had chosen not to comment earlier out of regard for the family's grief. Raut argued that Mumbai Police had examined the case more than once in the past and that their work could not be doubted, adding that a fair investigation had been attempted even under a government run by his political rivals.

Pointing to the present political arrangement, in which Shiv Sena is out of power and Devendra Fadnavis serves as chief minister and also holds the home portfolio, Raut said that an earlier investigation had in fact been completed and a closure report filed during Fadnavis's own tenure, and that this probe had found no link between Aditya Thackeray and the case, and no evidence against him. At the same time, Raut acknowledged that the claims tied to the CBI's new FIR, and where the fresh probe leads, would only be settled once that investigation was complete, and he stressed that a name appearing in an FIR does not establish guilt.

Raut also accused rivals of repeatedly using the case for political gain at the cost of Disha Salian's dignity and her family's. He called it unbecoming of Maharashtra's culture and said an effort was under way to damage the standing the Thackeray family holds among Marathi people. He said he would keep contesting what he described as a campaign to defame the family, and questioned the manner in which the case was being discussed in the media.

Raut further alleged irregularities around how details of the FIR became public, noting that only a single page out of what he said was a sixteen page document had surfaced. He claimed, without offering independent proof, that a meeting had taken place at the Sahyadri guest house on a Sunday, after which two leaders travelled together by car to the Asiatic Library, and that the leaked pages followed from what was discussed during that meeting and journey. These remain unverified claims made by Raut.

Shiv Sena leader Ramdas Kadam took a starkly different line, attacking both Uddhav Thackeray and Aditya Thackeray and declaring, "satyamev jayate," while demanding a thorough investigation. He asked whether Aditya Thackeray was an accused in the case and whether Disha Salian had been raped, saying both questions ought to be answered by the probe now that a case had been registered on the court's orders. Kadam said Satish Salian's naming of Aditya Thackeray also deserved investigation, though he too cautioned that being named in a complaint or an FIR does not amount to proof of guilt. He additionally asked whether any attempt had been made to destroy evidence while Uddhav Thackeray was chief minister, and said that too should be probed. Kadam went on to question Aditya Thackeray's reported movements at night, asking where he used to go at midnight and where he returned from at six in the morning. He added sarcastically, "Balasaheb earned it, and these people squandered it."