Bollywood manager's 2020 death reopened: Father alleges murder cover-up

On June 4, 2020, as Covid-19 ravaged India, Disha Salian left her home in Mumbai with her parents' blessing. The 28-year-old celebrity manager was heading out to shoot an advertising campaign—work she was genuinely excited about. She had shown her father, Satish Salian, a photograph of the advance payment cheque. Before she walked out the door, she told them she would be back in two days. She never came home.

Four nights later, on the intervening night of June 8 and 9, Satish Salian received a call from police summoning him to a hospital. His only child was dead. The official account was straightforward: she had fallen from the 12th floor of a building in Mumbai. Friends who had been with her said she had been drinking and the fall was accidental. Within days, police concluded it was suicide. The case was closed. The file was shelved.

But Satish Salian did not accept this version. From the beginning, he insisted his daughter had been murdered—gang-raped and killed—and that senior police officers had fabricated the suicide narrative to protect powerful people implicated in her death. For six years, he fought. He filed petitions. He gathered evidence of inconsistencies. He refused to let the story end.

On September 2, this month, the Bombay High Court ordered India's federal police agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, to reopen the case and investigate from the start. Judges Sarang V Kotwal and Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale issued a scathing critique of the original investigation, noting "too many glaring discrepancies" that raised more questions than answers. They pointed to the unexplained delay in police paperwork, the absence of blood at the location where the body fell, and injuries documented in the post-mortem report that seemed inconsistent with a fall from that height. Most significantly, they criticized police for never registering a formal First Information Report—the legal document required when a crime is suspected—treating the death instead as merely suspicious or unnatural.

At the time of her death, Salian was working for Kwan Entertainment, a celebrity management company, and represented Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. According to the allegations now being investigated, she had learned of "objectionable activities" involving powerful people and shared this information with Rajput, who then disclosed it to others. When word circled back to those implicated, she was killed to silence her, the theory goes. Rajput himself died less than a week later, also ruled a suicide by police, though his case was later handed to the CBI as well. That investigation concluded he had died by suicide and that his actress girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, who had been arrested amid public outcry, bore no responsibility.

Now, in the FIR registered by the CBI based on Satish Salian's written complaint, he has alleged that the two deaths are linked. He claims Disha shared with Rajput "incriminating and objectionable information" about alleged drug trafficking, child abuse, and other unlawful activities involving a former minister and others. The two, he says, intended to hold a press conference to expose these crimes. To prevent that exposure and protect those involved, he alleges, a conspiracy was orchestrated: Disha was gang-raped and murdered, evidence was suppressed or fabricated, and a false suicide narrative was constructed.

The case has become one of India's most discussed deaths in recent years, dominating headlines as the FIR names some of the state's most prominent politicians, police officers, and Bollywood figures. Allegations of misuse of political power, denials, and claims of political vendetta have swirled around it. The court's order made clear that registration of the FIR does not imply guilt against anyone and that no one shall be treated as accused unless sufficient grounds for reasonable suspicion are established.

Satish Salian told the BBC that his daughter was "very bright, she did well in her studies and read a lot. She had a heart of gold and was very helpful." She was their only child and loved them deeply. His wife, he said, has been unable to come to terms with her death and has fallen into depression. After six years of fighting, Satish Salian says he has felt "some peace" following the court's order for a fresh investigation. But his vision of justice is unsparing: he wants the death penalty for those who harmed his daughter, and he wants them to suffer as she suffered. The CBI's investigation is now underway, and the case that was closed six years ago has been reopened.