Bombay High Court sends Disha Salian's 2020 death to the CBI

The Bombay High Court on 2 September directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to open a fresh inquiry into the death of Disha Salian, the celebrity manager who fell from the 14th floor of a residential building in Malad on 8 June 2020. Mumbai police had registered an accidental death report at the time. Her father, Satish Salian, later petitioned the court for an FIR and a central investigation.

A bench of Justices Sarang Kotwal and Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale told the CBI to appoint a senior, experienced officer, register an FIR under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and record Satish Salian's statement. Malvani police station must send the entire case record to the agency at once. The judges added a hard limit: no person is to be treated as an accused unless the investigating officer collects sufficient material against that person.

If the officer concludes that no cognisable offence is made out, the CBI is to file a closure or summary report in the competent court. Satish Salian may then file a protest petition. If the officer finds enough material, a chargesheet is to be filed as early as possible. Advocate Nilesh Ojha, who appeared for the father, said the court had also said action could follow against anyone against whom evidence appears.

Salian was 28. She managed several film and television professionals. One of them was actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who died in Mumbai a week after her fall. Those two dates produced years of public speculation. Earlier police work did not establish a link between the deaths. The High Court order does not assert a link either. It transfers one closed accidental-death file into a criminal process with a new statute and a new agency.

The petition had asked for registration of an FIR on the father's allegation that his daughter was assaulted and killed. The court did not adopt that allegation as a finding. It created a route for the allegation to be tested. That distinction matters. An FIR starts an investigation. It is not a verdict. The bench's instruction that nobody be named without material is meant to stop the case from becoming a list of public figures attached by rumour.

The timing is six years after the fall. Witness memory fades. Phone and building CCTV records from 2020 may or may not still exist in usable form. The CBI will have to reconstruct what Malvani police collected, what was missed, and what can still be verified. The High Court reserved its order after hearings that concluded on 28 August, then delivered it on Wednesday morning.

For the film industry the legal change is narrower than the social-media reaction will suggest. The CBI is now the investigating agency. The father is a witness whose statement must be recorded. Named suspects do not exist until the officer writes them down with reasons. If the agency files a negative report, the family can challenge it. If it files a chargesheet, a magistrate will decide whether the case goes to trial.

That is the whole of Wednesday's order. It does not reopen the Rajput investigation. It does not assign blame. It moves one 2020 accidental-death file out of a local police station and into a central agency, under a statute that did not exist when Salian died, with an explicit bar on naming people without evidence.