Call for Jiah, Suraj’s chat records: Mum

Mumbai: Late Bollywood actress Jiah Khan’s mother Rabia’s lawyer on Friday requested the court to issue summons and call for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) record of the chat between Jiah and accused Suraj Pancholi. Rabia is seeking the chat between the duo of the day of the incident and a few days prior to it.

Rabia’s counsel Subhash Jha argued before judge Kavita Shirbhate that Rabia had worked very hard and got forensic experts’ opinion to show that this was a case of homicidal death and not suicide. “She may be wrong but it should be proved that she is wrong. The investigating agency cannot claim without any corroborative evidence that she is wrong,” argued advocate Jha. He said that even if it was accepted for a while that in the end, it would be a case of suicide, to prove the charge of abetment against the accused, the BBM record was very crucial evidence.

Advocate Jha further argued that the mobile phones used by Jiah and Suraj had BBM and such phones had global positioning system (GPS) which gave more accurate locations of phone users than tower locations that were used nowadays. He claimed that nobody had stopped the investigating agencies, Mumbai police, and later, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), from obtaining the BBM chat between Jiah and Suraj however they did not make the necessary efforts.

Advocate Jha told the court that although the police was told that BBM messages had been deleted and could not be provided, there were other options available such as approaching the BBM service provider to retrieve even the deleted messages.

The lawyer claimed that forensic experts could help retrieve deleted messages and hence, the court should direct the CBI to obtain those chats. Advocate Jha argued that if the police got BBM details, it would also come to know where Suraj was at the time of the incident.