Human remains found near missing starlet Laila's farm house

Mumbai/Nashik, Jul 10: Police have found human remains, including three skulls, near a farm house of Bollywood starlet Laila Khan who has been missing since early last year, while the key suspect in the kidnap case has claimed she has been murdered.

The remains were found after a day-long search by a team of Mumbai Crime Branch near the farm house located in Igatpuri, about 100km from here in Nashik district, police sources said.

Crime Branch is probing the kidnapping case of Laila and her family members. Prime suspect Pervez Tak had told the Jammu and Kashmir Police, who arrested him last month in a forgery case, that he shot dead Laila and others in Maharashtra last year. "We have found three skulls and cloth pieces in the septic tank of the farm house this evening," said a highly-placed source involved in the investigation.

Tak, a forest contractor, was taken to Igatpuri by the team following his claim that he had allegedly shot Laila and her family members. The human remains were recovered from the place shown by Tak, the sources said.

"Tak showed us some places where we dug and found these remains." Police said they would send the remains to the forensic laboratory to ascertain the identity. Rains and fog hampered the search operation.

The starlet and her family - mother Celina Patel, elder sister Hazmina, twin siblings Zara and Imran and another relative - went missing from Mumbai in Feb 2011. A case of kidnapping was registered at the Oshiwara police station here last week on a complaint of her father Nadir Patel. According to the complaint, Tak and his alleged accomplice Asif Shaikh kidnapped Laila and others.

PTI