A court has ordered that the death of film hero Salman Shah be registered as a murder case rather than an unnatural death, 29 years after the event. Dhaka’s Sixth Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge Md Jannatul Ferdous Ibne Haque issued the order on Monday. Abid Hasan, lawyer for Salman Shah’s mother Neela Chowdhury, confirmed the information.
The court granted the mother’s revision petition in the unnatural-death case over the actor’s death. It ordered Ramna Model police station to register the case as a murder case, attaching the complaint of Salman Shah’s father Komor Uddin and the statement of Rizvi Ahmed alias Farhad, who was connected with the incident.
Salman Shah died on 6 September 1996. His former wife Samira Haque claimed the actor’s sudden death was a “suicide.” But on 24 July 1997, Salman’s father, Komoruddin Ahmed Chowdhury, filed a case alleging his son had been murdered. At the time, Dhaka’s Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court directed the CID to investigate the unnatural-death case and the murder allegation together. Based on the CID’s final report, the CMM court on 25 November 1997 ruled the death a “suicide” — which Salman Shah’s father rejected, later filing a revision case.
A judicial inquiry into that revision case began in 2003. After a long 11 years, on 3 August 2014, Metropolitan Magistrate Imdadul Haque submitted a report citing “unnatural death.” After Komoruddin Ahmed Chowdhury, who had sought justice for his son’s death, died, Salman Shah’s mother Neela Chowdhury joined as the case’s plaintiff. In 2015 she filed a “no-confidence” (naraji) petition in the CMM court against the judicial inquiry report, and the case investigation then fell to the PBI.
On 25 February 2020, PBI police inspector Sirajul Islam submitted a final report to the court; on 31 October 2021 the court accepted it and disposed of the case. Against that disposal order, the plaintiff side again filed a revision case in Dhaka’s Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s court on 12 June 2022. That revision case argued that the murder had been covered up under the influence of several people, and that a planned murder was being called “suicide” and “unnatural death,” so a proper investigation was needed to establish the truth.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report