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MUMBAI — A sessions court in Mumbai on Friday awarded death sentence to Parvez Tak for the sensational killing of his step-daughter and actress Laila Khan, her mother, three siblings, and a cousin sister in 2011.
Additional Sessions Judge S.B. Pawar pronounced Tak guilty of the multiple murders on May 9, and the verdict on the quantum of punishment was delivered on Friday.
Tak, the third husband of Selina Patel, Laila's mother, has been found guilty of multiple murders, destruction of evidence, and other offences.
He had killed Selina and her four children, plus a niece, at their farmhouse in Igatpuri near Nashik in February 2011, ostensibly over a property dispute, and buried their bodies on the bungalow plot before absconding.
The children were killed because they had witnessed Tak murdering Selina, as per the probe.
The killings came to light after nine months when J&K Police arrested Tak, and the skeletal remains of the six victims were found buried in the garden of the farmhouse in July 2012.
Terming it a rarest of rare cases in which 40 witnesses were examined, public prosecutor Pankaj Chavan said that Tak first killed his wife Selina and then killed the five children in cold blood for which he deserved death penalty.
Besides Selina (51) and Laila (30), the others killed were Azmina Khan (32), twins Imran Khan (25) and Zara Khan (25), and their cousin sister Reshma Khan (22).
In the 984-page charge sheet filed in the case, the police had invoked charges pertaining to murder, kidnapping, robbery, conspiracy, and destruction of evidence.
Laila had appeared in a few Bollywood films, including 'Wafaa' (2008) opposite the late superstar Rajesh Khanna.
After Laila and her family abruptly went missing, her father Nadir Patel had approached the police amid a huge hue and cry.
The police probed many theories and conspiracies, but the case was finally cracked after it emerged that the actress’ phone was last active in Igatpuri before the family 'disappeared'.