On September 2, 2026, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court did something Satish Salian had spent six years asking three different forums to do: it ordered the CBI to register a First Information Report and investigate the death of his daughter, Disha Salian, a former talent manager who had briefly worked with actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The order, passed by Justices Sarang V. Kotwal and Ranjitsinha R. Bhonsale, does not find that anyone murdered Disha Salian, and it says so in as many words. What it does is more precise and, for anyone who practices criminal law in India, considerably more consequential: it holds that the Mumbai Police could not lawfully treat a death attended by specific allegations of rape and murder as a mere “accidental death” inquiry, and that six years of an inadequate inquiry does not exhaust a High Court’s power under Article 226 to compel a proper investigation.

A Death, an Inquiry, and Six Years of Silence

Disha Salian, 28, died on June 8, 2020, after falling from the 14th floor of a residential building in Mumbai’s Malad suburb — six days before Sushant Singh Rajput’s own death drew nationwide attention and, eventually, a Supreme Court-ordered CBI investigation of its own. Salian’s death did not receive the same treatment. The Malvani police station registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR) under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) — the provision meant for a limited inquest into the apparent cause of an unnatural death — rather than a First Information Report under Section 154 CrPC for a cognizable offence.

That inquiry concluded with a closure report attributing her death to depression linked to failed projects and a dispute with her father over money — a finding a special executive magistrate accepted on February 4, 2021. Satish Salian rejected that conclusion from the outset, alleging his daughter had been sexually assaulted and murdered, and named several individuals, including Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray, as persons he wanted investigated. He pursued the matter through repeated representations and a writ petition before the Bombay High Court; when he separately approached the Supreme Court, it declined to intervene directly, telling him, as reported by the Tribune, to go to the High Court because “they know the case and they will take an informed decision.”

What the High Court Found Wrong With a Six-Year-Old Inquiry

The September 2 order did not simply defer to the police’s 2021 conclusion. According to LiveLaw’s reporting on the judgment, the Bench identified what it called “glaring discrepancies” in the original inquiry — among them, that the post-mortem report recorded no significant external injuries consistent with a fall from the fourteenth floor, a finding the petitioner’s counsel argued was medically difficult to reconcile with the police’s own account of events.

The Bench also asked a more basic procedural question: if the victim’s own father was raising a specific, articulable suspicion about the circumstances of her death, what justified confining the response to a Section 174 inquest at all? The Court held that an inquiry into the “apparent cause of death” under Section 174 CrPC — now Section 194 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023 — cannot substitute for a full investigation once the material on record discloses, or plausibly discloses, a cognizable offence. That distinction is not a technicality. A Section 174 inquest is investigatory only in a narrow, medico-legal sense; it does not carry the statutory machinery — arrest, seizure, forensic investigation into culpability, interrogation of suspects — that a Section 154 CrPC (Section 173 BNSS) investigation does. Treating a case as the former when the facts call for the latter can permanently foreclose an accused-or-victim’s family’s access to a real investigation, simply because the initial classification was too narrow.

The Governing Doctrine: Lalita Kumari and the Limits of Police Discretion

The Bombay High Court’s reasoning tracks a line of authority the Supreme Court settled over a decade ago. In Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh, (2014) 2 SCC 1, a five-judge Constitution Bench held that registration of an FIR under Section 154(1) CrPC is mandatory the moment information discloses the commission of a cognizable offence — the police have no discretion to first satisfy themselves of the credibility of the information through an unregulated “preliminary inquiry.” A preliminary inquiry is permissible only in a narrow set of categories (matrimonial and family disputes, commercial disputes, corruption cases, and cases with abnormal delay, among others identified by the Court) and, even then, only to determine whether a cognizable offence is disclosed at all — not to pre-judge whether the allegation is true.

Applied here, the logic is straightforward: allegations of rape and murder, however contested, describe cognizable offences. If Satish Salian’s complaint disclosed those allegations in 2020, Lalita Kumari suggests the police’s obligation was to register an FIR and investigate — not to close the matter through an inquest into “apparent cause of death” and a subsequent acceptance of a closure report by a magistrate who, on this record, never had a cognizable-offence investigation in front of them to evaluate.

The Maintainability Challenge

Aaditya Thackeray, who intervened in the proceedings, resisted the petition on procedural grounds as well as the merits. His counsel, Senior Advocate Sudeep Pasbola, argued that the writ petition under Article 226 was not maintainable because Salian had alternate statutory remedies — such as a protest petition against the closure report, or an application under Section 156(3) CrPC (now Section 175(3) BNSS) before a magistrate — that he ought to have exhausted first.

The Bench did not accept this as a bar. That outcome is consistent with settled constitutional law: the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, most recently reaffirmed in rulings summarized by Bar and Bench, that the mere existence of an alternate remedy is a rule of prudence for a High Court to consider, not an absolute jurisdictional bar on a writ petition — particularly where, as alleged here, the statutory remedy has already been tried without success, or where the case involves an enforcement of fundamental rights and a failure of process spanning years.

Built-In Safeguards: What the Order Does Not Decide

The Bench was explicit that ordering an FIR is not a finding against anyone. As LiveLaw reported, the Court held that “nobody shall be treated as an accused unless, in the opinion of the investigating officer, there are sufficient grounds to raise reasonable suspicion against him, depending on the material collected during the investigation” — and that finding was reflected specifically in how the Court addressed Aaditya Thackeray’s position as one of several individuals named in the original complaint. That formulation matters as much as the direction to investigate itself. Registration of an FIR is the opening of an inquiry, not its verdict; it triggers the CBI’s power to investigate, collect evidence, and record statements, and nothing in the order pre-supposes the outcome for any of the individuals named in the original complaint, Aaditya Thackeray included.

Operationally, the Bench directed the Joint Director of the CBI (Mumbai Region) to designate a senior, experienced investigating officer, record Satish Salian’s statement, and formally register the FIR. It further directed the Malvani police station to hand over the entire case file, physical exhibits, and related records to the CBI, and — per Bar and Bench’s report — asked the agency to examine “all aspects” surrounding the death rather than confining itself to a narrow re-verification of the earlier closure report.

For practitioners, the order is a useful, current illustration of three doctrines converging in one case: the mandatory-FIR rule of Lalita Kumari, the settled position that Article 226 relief is not ousted merely because a parallel statutory remedy (a protest petition or a Section 175(3) BNSS application) exists, and the transitional reality that CrPC-era classifications (Section 174 inquests, Section 154 FIRs) are now read alongside their BNSS successors even in cases that originated before the new code came into force on July 1, 2024. Lawyers advising families of victims in unnatural-death cases should note that a Section 174/194 inquest closing a matter is not necessarily the end of the road — where the underlying facts disclose a cognizable offence, a writ petition compelling FIR registration remains available, years later if necessary, and a magistrate’s acceptance of a closure report does not foreclose a High Court’s supervisory jurisdiction over the adequacy of the underlying investigation.

For citizens, the case is also a reminder of how much procedural classification matters at the first point of police contact: whether a death is logged as an “accidental death” or as a cognizable offence can determine whether a family gets access to a genuine criminal investigation at all, or only a limited inquest — a distinction that, in this case, took six years and two rounds of litigation to correct. The CBI investigation now begins from a formally registered FIR; where it leads, and whether it results in any finding against any individual, remains to be determined through due process, not through today’s order.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has the Bombay High Court found that Disha Salian was murdered?

No. The Court has directed registration of an FIR and a CBI investigation into the circumstances of her death; it has made no finding that she was murdered, and it expressly held that no person is to be treated as an accused unless sufficient material emerges during the investigation.

What is the difference between the earlier police inquiry and what the CBI must now do?

The earlier inquiry was an Accidental Death Report under Section 174 CrPC (now Section 194 BNSS), a limited inquest into the apparent cause of death. The High Court has now directed registration of an FIR — a full investigation into a cognizable offence, carrying powers of arrest, seizure, and interrogation of suspects that an inquest does not have.

Does naming someone in the original complaint mean they are now an accused?

No. Individuals named in Satish Salian’s original complaint, including Aaditya Thackeray, become potential subjects of investigation, not accused persons, unless and until the investigating officer finds sufficient material to raise reasonable suspicion against them.

Why didn’t the Supreme Court hear this case directly?

When Satish Salian earlier approached the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe, the Court declined to intervene in the first instance and directed him to approach the Bombay High Court, noting that the High Court was better placed to take an informed decision on the facts, with liberty to return to the Supreme Court if needed.

The Bombay High Court held that a Section 174 inquest cannot substitute for an investigation once the record discloses a cognizable offence, and that its writ jurisdiction under Article 226 was not barred merely because alternate remedies such as a protest petition existed. This follows the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh, (2014) 2 SCC 1, that FIR registration is mandatory once information discloses a cognizable offence.

What happens next in the case?

The CBI’s Mumbai Region Joint Director must designate a senior officer to record Satish Salian’s statement and register the FIR, after which the Malvani police station must transfer the entire case file and physical evidence to the CBI, which will then investigate all aspects of the death.

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