Inspector General of Police (IGP) Azizul Haq yesterday's referred filmstar Salman Shah's death case to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for further investigation, according to police sources.

The Detective Branch of police handed over the documents relating to the case to the CID yesterday evening and Assistant Police Commissioner (CID, city zone) Khalequzzaman has been appointed the Investigation Officer. The death of Salman, accorded as an unnatural death (UD) case on September 6, 1996, took a dramatic turn on July 22 last when one Rezvi Ahmed in a confessional statement said that he killed Salman with the help of Salman's wife and mother-in-law and eight other accomplices.

Later, Salman Shah's father Kamaruddin Chowdhury filed a petition with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's court praying for converting the UD case to a murder case on the basis of confessional statement made by Rezvi under Section 164 of the CrPC. The Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sunday ordered the IGP to take necessary action relating to the petition filed by Salman's father.

Earlier last week, the DMP Commissioner had asked the Detective Branch (DB) to re-investigate into the death of the filmstar, the sources said. The DB had declined to take up the case as it had earlier conducted two investigations with same finding that Salman had committed suicide. At that time, two postmortem reports on Salman Shah's body also produced the same result.

Meanwhile, the dramatic confession of Rezvi had triggered Salman's fans to bring out processions in the city in the last few days demanding trail and punishment of the killers. At the same time, many people expressed their doubts about the credibility of Rezvi. Many newspapers focused on Samira, the wife of Salman Shah, saying that she had married the son of a businessmen from Chittagong and left the country. After investigation into the matter by The Daily Star, this report was found to be baseless.