Court Revokes Permission to Exhume Salman Shah’s Remains
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A court on Tuesday revoked its previous order allowing the exhumation of the body of legendary Bangladeshi film actor Salman Shah.
Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Jewel Rana issued the order after hearing a petition filed by the plaintiff's side seeking cancellation of the earlier permission.
Lawyer Abid Hasan confirmed the development. Plaintiff Mohammad Alamgir Kumkum submitted the petition to the court on Tuesday, requesting that the exhumation order be withdrawn. Following a hearing, the court granted the application.
According to the petition, nearly 30 years have passed since Salman Shah’s death, making it highly unlikely that any meaningful human remains could be recovered due to natural decomposition. The petition also noted that when the actor’s body was exhumed under a court order on January 13, 1997, it was found in an advanced state of decomposition.
The application further stated that Salman Shah was buried at the shrine complex of Hazrat Shahjalal (R) in Sylhet and remains interred there. It argued that another attempt to exhume the body could hurt religious sentiments and potentially create public unrest. Both plaintiff Mohammad Alamgir Kumkum and informant Neela Chowdhury expressed objections to the exhumation.
Earlier, on May 20, CID Inspector Ziaul Morshed sought court permission to exhume the body. On May 24, the court approved the request and ordered the exhumation to be conducted in the presence of an executive magistrate, along with the preparation of an inquest report and a fresh autopsy.
On October 20 of last year, a court ordered that the unnatural death case surrounding Salman Shah be treated as a murder case. The following night, Mohammad Alamgir Kumkum, acting on behalf of Salman Shah’s mother Neela Chowdhury filed a murder case.
The case names Salman Shah’s former wife Samira Haq, her mother Latifa Haque Lusi, businessman Aziz Mohammad Bhai, actor Don, Debit, Javed, Faruk, Ruby, Abdus Sattar, Saju, and Rezvi Ahmed also known as Farhad, as accused.
Salman Shah’s body was recovered from his residence in Dhaka’s Eskaton area on September 6, 1996. At the time, his father Kamruddin Ahmed Chowdhury filed an unnatural death case.
In 1997, after a petition was filed seeking investigation of the incident as a murder, the court directed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to begin an inquiry.
On November 3, 1997, CID submitted its final report to the court, concluding that the actor had died by suicide. The court accepted the report on November 25 of the same year. A revision petition was later filed challenging that decision.
In 2003, the case was referred for judicial investigation. Eleven years later, in 2014, the judicial inquiry report also concluded that the death was an unnatural death rather than a homicide.
Following the death of Kamruddin Ahmed Chowdhury, Neela Chowdhury was added as the plaintiff in the case. In 2015, she filed a petition challenging the judicial investigation report. The Police Bureau of Investigation (PBI) later investigated the matter.
On October 31, 2021, the court accepted the PBI report and disposed of the case. Subsequently, on June 12, 2022, a revision petition challenging that order was filed with the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court.
