DNA tests confirm bodies at Igatpuri those of starlet, family

Forensic reports have confirmed that the six skeletal remains dug out from Bollywood starlet Laila Khan's Igatpuri farmhouse are of the actress and her family. Mohamed Thaver reports.

Forensic reports have confirmed that the six skeletal remains dug out from Bollywood starlet Laila Khan's Igatpuri farmhouse are of the actress and her family.

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The report, sent to the crime branch last week, identifies the skeletal remains as that of Laila Khan, 30, her mother Celina Patel, 59, sisters Azmina, 32, Zara, 25, brother Imran, 25,

and cousin Reshma Khan alias Talli, 19.

"We matched the DNA found from the skeletal remains with samples from family members who are alive and they matched," said an official from the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) at Kalina, on condition of anonymity.

Experts used a complex procedure to establish the identities as five persons belonged to one family, while the sixth was a cousin sister.

Explaining how they went about the DNA match, the official said: "The DNA samples taken from Celina's mother matched with the remains identified as Celina. And those that matched with Celina's belonged to her daughters and son. To identify Reshma's body, we used the DNA samples of her parents. Imran was also identified by the typical male skeletal structure."

Though the DNA match establishes Laila's family as separate from her cousin sister, little can be done to identify the individual remains of the actress and her two sisters because of identical DNA patterns.

The lab will not conduct any further tests to identify individual bodies of the three sisters, the official said. "Individual body recognition is not vital. It has been established that the three bodies belong to the three sisters. We have already sent the report."

An officer from the crime branch confirmed that they had received the report. "We have already filed the charge sheet in the case, so we will add the DNA report as evidence against Parvez Tak. It will bolster the evidence against Tak, who murdered the family and buried them," the officer said.

Laila and five family members were reported missing by her father Nadirshah Patel in February 2011. In July this year, the crime branch interrogated Parvez Tak after he was arrested in Kishtwar in Jammu and Kashmir.

Tak confessed that he had killed the family as he was unhappy with Celina's closeness to her second ex-husband, Asif Sheikh.