Mumbai, July 6 -- Property, intrigue, murder - that was what Bollywood starlet Laila Khan's 2008 debut film Wafaa was about. Ironically enough, those very ingredients seem to have coloured her life off screen as well.
On Thursday, the stepfather of the missing actor, Pervez Tak, confessed to murdering Laila and four family members during interrogation in another case. He said their bodies had been disposed of near Mumbai.
Laila, her mother Saleena Begum and three other family members have been missing since February 2011. Police, however, said the murder theory could not be confirmed till they had sufficient evidence to corroborate Tak's claims.
Saleena's third husband, Tak, is a suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba member, who was nabbed in Kishtwar on June 21.
Speaking to a TV channel on Thursday, Laila's father Nadir Shah Patel, however, said he did not "believe" Tak.
Mumbai's JCP, crime, Himanshu Roy confirmed that a team of the Mumbai police crime branch was already in J&K to get the custody of Tak in connection with the kidnapping case registered by Patel.
In the complaint, Patel had accused Tak and Saleena's second husband Asif Sheikh of kidnapping Laila and other family members.
There are unconfirmed reports of Laila's terror connections too. Her husband Munir Khan is an alleged member of the Bangladeshi terror outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami.
Sources in the crime branch said they were hopeful of getting Tak's custody by Friday.
Officials said all those who were missing were last seen with Tak in Igatpuri in Nashik last year, when they told the caretaker of Laila's house that they were leaving for J&K for a wedding and would return after two months.
Published by HT Syndication with permission from Hindustan Times.
