Rajesh Khanna’s co-star Laila Khan and family murdered and buried in farmhouse

The glitter of Bollywood collided with one of its darkest crimes when actress Laila Khan, who once shared screen space with legend Rajesh Khanna, was brutally murdered along with five members of her family.

Their bodies, buried in a farmhouse pit and left undiscovered for nearly a year and a half, were unearthed only after a painstaking investigation that exposed betrayal, greed, and cold-blooded violence within the family itself.

Laila, who played the lead in Khanna’s 2008 film Wafa: A Deadly Love Story, vanished with her mother, siblings, and relatives in 2011. What initially seemed like a mysterious disappearance was later revealed to be a calculated massacre orchestrated by her stepfather Parvez Tak, a man consumed by resentment, control, and property disputes.

According to former Mumbai Crime Branch officer Ambadas Pote, who investigated the case, Tak objected to Laila’s film career, resented her treatment of him, and clashed repeatedly with the family over money and her refusal to relocate abroad. His festering anger turned into a murderous conspiracy, aided by an associate he planted as a watchman at the family’s Igatpuri farmhouse.

The family was lured to the farmhouse under the guise of a holiday. After an evening of barbecue and laughter, Tak and his accomplice struck—attacking the unsuspecting family with a rod and knife.

Laila’s brother Imran fought to defend them despite being gravely injured, but each was bludgeoned and stabbed until Tak was certain they were dead. Their bodies were then dumped into a pit meant for a swimming pool, layered under mattresses and soil.

For 17 months, the crime remained hidden—until the rains caused the earth to sink, exposing the graves. In a joint operation, Mumbai and J&K police arrested Tak in Kashmir. His chilling confession led investigators to the skeletal remains, confirming one of Bollywood’s most horrifying tragedies.

Last year, more than a decade after the murders, a Mumbai sessions court sentenced Tak to death, calling it a “rarest of rare case” that shocked the conscience of society. “Parvez Tak is a shrewd, cunning and dangerous criminal. But however much you run, you cannot hide. The law will catch up with you,” the late Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy had said at the time of the investigation.

Tak’s accomplice remains untraced. But with the death sentence, the law has delivered a grim closure to a case that turned a forgotten B-movie into a chilling reminder of how fame, family, and betrayal can converge in tragedy.