Was Jiah Khan's hanging staged? British forensic expert thinks so

Actress Jiah Khan's mysterious death three years ago – apparently a suicide, as she was found hanging in her Juhu apartment in June 2013 - has a shocking twist.

A UK forensic expert hired by her mother, Rabia, has said the "hanging was staged", according to a report in Mumbai Mirror. The pronouncement is much in contradiction with the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) conclusion that she had killed herself.

The CBI had even charged Khan's then boyfriend Sooraj Pancholi with abetment-to-suicide, but had ruled out murder in August this year, even though Rabia insisted over three years that her daughter did not commit suicide.

She plans to share forensic expert Jason Payne-James's report with a Mumbai sessions court on September 21, but is not sure if it will pay heed to the findings of an independent investigator.

Khan debuted in Bollywood in 2007, alongside Amitabh Bachchan in the film Nishabd. She also worked with Aamir Khan in Ghajini (2008).

While the CBI explained the injury marks on Jiah's lower lip as "the result of friction with the teeth during the commission of the act (suicide)", Payne-James's findings say the injuries "represent either abrasions or bruises", and are indicative of "blunt force trauma to the mouth region (for example punching or a hand placed over the mouth)".

"In terms of their site and appearance, they are not typical of teeth marks," the report states.

The ligature marks on Jiah's neck, the state forensic experts said, "may be caused due to slippage of ligature material (dupatta) slightly downwards or the ligature knot present at that site".

But Payne-James concludes that such impressions could not have been created by a dupatta. "It would seem unlikely that the diffuse pressure of the dupatta around the neck would cause the well-defined abraded ligature mark seen," his report says.

It adds: "There are a number of serious misinterpretations (or exclusions of reasonable inferences) of medical evidence, and that the apparent intention to attribute her death to suicide may mean that the real possibility of a staged hanging subsequent to earlier death at the hands of another has been missed."

Suraj's father Aditya Pancholi doubts the report will be admissible in court. He told the tabloid: "This report is from a private forensic lab and it's paid for. We will see if a court admits it or not. Investigations have been done by different agencies and all of them have come to the same conclusion (that it was a suicide)."

Let's see what the court does. According to legal experts, the new finding would probably be taken into account.

Also read: Pratyusha, Jiah Khan, Divya Bharti: How many stars will we lose?