Fifteen days after Jammu & Kashmir native Parvez Tak was convicted for the February 2011 murders of actress Laila Khan (Wafaa) and five of her family members — her mother, Shelina Patel, two sisters, a brother and a cousin — a sessions court in Bombay on May 24 sentenced him to death. The court termed the “unprovoked and unjustified” elimination of an entire family “barbaric and cold-blooded”.
Tak was the live-in partner of Shelina Patel. The six bodies were discovered 17 months after the murder, buried in a pit at Laila Khan’s (original name Reshma Patel) Igatpuri farmhouse. In other words, Parvez Tak hid the dead bodies for 17 months.
In the 250-odd-page order, judge Sachin Balvant Pawar observed that while the motive was not clearly established, the fact that the victims were last seen alive in Parvez Tak’s company at their Oshiwara flat in Bombay a day before their murder, was clinching evidence to draw inference that he was involved in the murders. There is another person (Shakir Wani) who was involved in the crime along with Tak, but he is absconding. Tak had been arrested by the J & K police in a cheating case in June 2012 and was then questioned about Laila’s family. A month later, he confessed that they were killed. Based on his information, the remains of the deceased were recovered from the farmhouse in Igatpuri.
In the early hours of February 8, 2011, all the victims with the accused proceeded to Igatpuri in their two cars. Nobody saw them alive on and from February 9. After killing the entire family on February 8/9, Tak abandoned the two cars in J & K. Laila and her family members were brutally attacked with knives, and iron rods and wooden logs were hit on their heads causing skull fractures. It is believed that Tak wanted to make money by compelling Shelina’s daughter to go for prostitution to a Dubai sheikh. He eliminated all of them when they refused. Laila’s father, Nadir Patel, was the first to raise an alarm that his former wife, Shelina, and children were missing. Shelina’s second husband, Asif Shaikh, was among the 41 witnesses examined in the case. Nadir Patel has since died.
The judge said, “…keeping in mind the magnitude and enormity of the crime as well as the ghastly nature of the offence, in the light of all aggravating circumstances of the crime and mitigating circumstances, in my opinion, the accused is liable to suffer the maximum punishment… I come to the conclusion that the accused deserves to be awarded the death penalty… The act is without justification or provocation. The murders certainly involved exceptional depravity on part of the accused. The act of the accused is not only barbaric but also inhuman of the highest degree.” The judge had on May 9 found Tak guilty of murder and destruction of evidence and had adjourned the matter for hearing arguments on the quantum of sentence.