Disha Salian and the Sushant Singh Rajput Case Revival: What We Actually Know
Six years after a fall from a Malad high-rise, the CBI has an FIR, a decorated investigator and a list of names — and almost nothing that a court has yet tested.
Compiled from live news data by NewzAI · September 17, 2026
A Closed File Is Open Again
On September 14, 2026, the Central Bureau of Investigation registered an FIR into the death of Disha Salian, the celebrity manager who had worked with actor Sushant Singh Rajput. She died on June 8, 2020, after falling from a residential building in Mumbai's Malad area. Mumbai Police filed an Accidental Death Report at the time. Six years, one Special Investigation Team and a High Court order later, the file is criminal. Read on NewzAI →
What has followed in the three days since is less an investigation than a public brawl: a Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA named in the FIR, a former chief minister invoking Donald Trump to mock the probe, two Bollywood actors issuing denials, and a ₹500 crore defamation notice from the dead woman's father. Very little of it is evidence. Here is what is actually on the record.
Image credit: DNA India
What Happened in June 2020
Salian, 28, died after a fall from a high-rise in Malad. The Malwani police registered an Accidental Death Report (ADR); police later described the death as suicide. Six days after, on June 14, 2020, Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his Bandra residence — and the two deaths have been braided together in Indian public discourse ever since. Read on NewzAI →
Reporting on the basic facts still diverges. DNA says Salian fell from the 14th floor; The Hindu and the Times of India say the 12th. Most accounts date the fall to June 8; one Times of India report places it at around 2:25 am on June 9. A Special Investigation Team set up by the Maharashtra government in 2023 reportedly found no evidence of foul play. Her father, Satish Salian, initially said he did not suspect a criminal angle. He changed position, and last year petitioned the Bombay High Court alleging rape and murder. Read on NewzAI →
How the Court Forced It Open
A Division Bench of Justice Bharti Dangre and Justice Manjusha Deshpande questioned why only an ADR had been registered when the family was alleging murder. The court also noted that copies of the post-mortem report and the ADR had not been given to Salian's family even five years after her death — a procedural failure that did as much to reopen the case as any new evidence.
The bench directed the CBI to register an FIR and investigate. It attached a significant caveat: no person should be treated as an accused unless sufficient material emerges during the probe. Speaking to ANI before the FIR, Satish Salian said he had given investigators names he wanted examined: “I listed all the names: Aditya, Sooraj Pancholi, Dino Morea, and the bodyguards.” He added, “The truth cannot be defeated.” Read on NewzAI →
Rajput's sister, Shweta Singh Kirti, posted her own response to the development: “Truth has its own power… it can be suppressed for some time, troubled, but it cannot be defeated.”
What the FIR Actually Says
The FIR invokes criminal conspiracy, gang rape, murder, destruction of evidence, and fabrication of records by a public servant to shield perpetrators. This is the single most important fact about it: no individual has been named as an accused. The names circulating — Aaditya Thackeray, Dino Morea, Sooraj Pancholi, Rhea Chakraborty — appear as people whose roles require investigation. Being named in an FIR establishes nothing. Read on NewzAI →
Accounts of the list itself differ. Advocate Nilesh Ojha, who represents Satish Salian, has said the FIR names Aaditya Thackeray, Rohan Roy, Rhea Chakraborty and former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh. Other reports list Dino Morea and Sooraj Pancholi instead. The FIR text has not been published, so these are competing second-hand descriptions of the same document.
The Officer Now Holding the File
The CBI has deputed Seema Pahuja, a Superintendent of Police in the Special Crime Unit at headquarters in New Delhi, to lead the investigation, assisted by Investigating Officer DSP Puran Kumar. Pahuja worked on the 2024 RG Kar Hospital rape and murder case in Kolkata, was part of the 15-member team on the Hathras case, and investigated the 2017 Unnao rape case and the rape and murder of a minor in Shimla. She received the Gold Medal for Best Investigating Officer in 2021. Read on NewzAI →
Image credit: DNA India
The first task is the narrowest and the oldest: recording statements from everyone present at a gathering at the Mumbai home of Salian's fiancé, Rohan Rai (reported as Rohan Roy in some accounts), on the night before she died. The team will also re-examine the original police investigation, site evidence and forensic inputs. One thread in particular is open: per a police constable's statement, an unidentified woman was among three people who took Salian to Shatabdi Hospital after the fall. She has never been identified.
The Political Fight That Followed
Aaditya Thackeray, the Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA, denied any connection on X: “I have never met Disha Salian, nor did I have any acquaintance with her.” He called the linkage a “deliberate, evidence-free attempt at character assassination by a few individuals with clear political and personal motives,” and asked that the re-investigation proceed without distraction. Read on NewzAI →
Image credit: DNA India
His father, former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, went further on September 17. “The incident was tragic, but why are we being dragged into this? We have nothing to do with it. It is completely politically motivated,” he told reporters, before adding the line that has carried the day's coverage: “Why don't you drag PM Modi and Trump's names into this as well?” He warned of legal action: “Conduct your probe but do not indulge in character assassination.” Read on NewzAI →
Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut called the FIR an attempt to malign the Thackeray family and challenged the rival Rane family to hand any evidence to the CBI. “We are ready to fight. He is not alone in this,” Raut said. Read on NewzAI →
Satish Salian answered the “politically motivated” framing with a ₹500 crore legal notice to Aaditya Thackeray and NCP (SP) leader Anil Deshmukh, calling their statements “false, baseless, reckless and grossly defamatory.” Beyond damages, it demands a public apology across print, television and digital media, plus a video apology of at least three minutes on both leaders' social accounts. Read on NewzAI →
Actor Sooraj Pancholi, who says his statement was recorded by the CBI and police four to five years ago, issued the sharpest note of the week: “A headline is not evidence. A debate is not evidence. Someone saying something on television does not make it a fact.” He said he supports a thorough CBI probe and remains available to investigators. Read on NewzAI →
What to Watch
Three things will decide whether this revival produces answers or another round of noise. First, whether the CBI can reconstruct the night of June 8, 2020 from statements taken six years late — memory and physical evidence both decay, and the original ADR route means far less was preserved than a murder investigation would have kept. Second, whether the unidentified woman who accompanied Salian to hospital can be traced. Third, whether the court's instruction — that no one be treated as an accused without material — survives contact with television studios and election-season politics.
For now the honest summary is short. There is an FIR with serious sections and no accused. There is a capable investigator and a cold trail. There are denials from everyone named, a defamation notice from a grieving father, and a six-year-old question that the Bombay High Court decided had never properly been asked.
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