Fiji Police are treating the December 2024 death of Australian hotel manager Jason Rigby as a murder, assistant commissioner Loraini Seru has said, after the case was recorded first as a suicide, then as a suspicious death, then as a suicide again. That reclassification reaches the public through a single secondary source: two regional versions of one Now To Love report, and Seru’s remarks to the Nine Network programme 60 Minutes as quoted in them. Neither the Fiji Police Force, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions nor the Australian Federal Police has publicly confirmed it, and we will update this report if any of them does.
Rigby, 40, was executive assistant manager at a hotel in Nadi and died in the hotel’s staff quarters; his family on the Gold Coast was told on 14 December 2024, according to the women’s title Now To Love.
Why the case is resurfacing now
Three things have moved almost two years on. Seru gave the murder confirmation to 60 Minutes. The Office of the DPP was recently handed the police brief of evidence. And Rigby’s sister-in-law Jessica Rigby has a book on the family’s search for answers, While The Baby Slept, due in November.
What a brief with the DPP actually means
A brief of evidence is the investigators’ assembled case — witness statements, exhibits and forensic material — handed to prosecutors to test whether a charge can be sustained. In Fiji murder is an indictable offence tried in the High Court, so it is the Office of the DPP, not the investigating officers, that decides whether to charge, and a murder charge would open with a first appearance in a Magistrates Court before transfer to the High Court. No statutory clock runs on that decision, and neither Now To Love version puts a timeline on it, so the brief’s arrival with prosecutors does not signal that a charge is imminent.
The exhibits in such a file are held in Fiji, and the force’s handling of physical evidence has been scrutinised elsewhere: this site has reported on moves to centralise drug exhibit storage after cocaine went missing. Neither Now To Love report links that case to Rigby’s.
Key facts
Who he was
Jason Rigby, 40, an Australian who had spent his career in hotels and had made Fiji his adopted home, according to Now To Love.
How the family was told
Surfers Paradise police left a note for Rigby’s mother Robyn; his girlfriend Shivani Siwan then told Robyn by phone that Rigby had gone to the bathroom and stabbed himself to death.
What is still missing
Rigby’s personal phone has not been found, and data from his work phone has not been extracted.
What the family says does not add up
According to Now To Love, brother Chris, 41, and father Peter, 71, flew to Fiji immediately and became suspicious within days over the way hotel staff behaved towards them, the absence of any incident report and the missing personal phone. The family also believes the knife that killed Rigby did not belong in his apartment, says no suicide note was found and that initial tests in Fiji found no alcohol in his system, and describes a man with holiday plans who was plotting to buy property in Australia, had never had mental health challenges and enjoyed life. They hired a private investigator and a lawyer before going to the media. Chris, who last saw his brother in August 2024 when Jason visited the Gold Coast, told the outlet the family wants everyone responsible, and everything that stood in the way of the truth, held to account, and that they went public so no other family has to fight as hard to learn what happened to someone they love.
Who police have spoken to
Shivani Siwan, girlfriend
Siwan, who had been dating Rigby for about six months and was present when he died, is the only person interviewed so far, Seru told 60 Minutes. The Australian version quotes her saying: “She is treated as a suspect… we have interviewed [her].” The New Zealand version carries the same confirmation about the interview but not the “treated as a suspect” wording. No charge has been reported against her.
Ian Lovie and Arushi Arora, colleagues
Rigby’s best friend, the hotel’s executive chef Ian Lovie, was in the same room while paramedics tried and failed to save his life. Lovie has given a statement to Fijian police but has not spoken to the Rigby family, which has been told Siwan’s first call was to him. A third colleague, Arushi Arora, arrived after a call from Lovie and has previously been reported as describing finding Rigby in pain, with a large, bloodied knife on a table nearby. Now To Love states that Lovie and Arora are not suspects and are not accused of any wrongdoing.
Where the investigation stands
The family and Fijian police are waiting on technical experts at the Australian Federal Police to extract data from Rigby’s work phone, Now To Love reports, which leaves the case’s central piece of evidence in another country’s hands. Jessica Rigby told the outlet the family believes that data is crucial because it will show where Rigby was and who he was speaking to, and that someone knows what happened. Our wider Fiji crime and courts coverage and Fiji Police Force reporting track cases like this one as they move through the DPP and the courts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has anyone been charged over Jason Rigby’s death?
No. As at the 10 October 2026 Now To Love report, the brief of evidence sat with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the investigation was continuing.
What is While The Baby Slept?
A book by Jessica Rigby, wife of Jason’s brother Chris, on the family’s fight to uncover what happened to him. Now To Love reports Hembury Books publishes it in November.
What independent checks sit behind this report?
We searched the Fijian outlets The Fiji Times, Fiji Sun, FBC News and Fijivillage and found no report on the reclassification, and we located no primary document behind it: no police media release, no charge sheet and no court listing. Read everything here as a summary of Now To Love’s reporting rather than as independently verified fact.
