Top court allows CBI probe in Sushant Singh Rajput’s death

RHEA’S PLEA DISMISSED Mumbai police told to hand over all evidence to probe agency

NEW DELHI/PATNA/MUMBAI: The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the ongoing probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the case filed against actor Rhea Chakraborty and her family for allegedly abetting the suicide of Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput is lawful, allowing the federal agency to continue its investigation and rejecting a plea by Chakraborty to transfer the case to the Maharashtra Police.

A single-judge bench of justice Hrishikesh Roy invoked powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to hold that a fair, competent and impartial investigation is required considering the fact that there are competing claims and acrimonious allegations of political interference by the Maharashtra and Bihar governments.

“In such situation, there is reasonable apprehension of truth being a casualty and justice becoming a victim. To ensure public confidence in the investigation and to do complete justice in the matter, this court considers it appropriate to invoke the powers conferred by Article 142 of the Constitution.

The ongoing investigation by the CBI is held to be lawful,” the court said. Article 142 empowers the Supreme Court to pass orders for doing complete justice in cases before it.

Rajput was found hanging at his Mumbai apartment on June 14 in what police said appeared to be an open-and-shut case of suicide. The post-mortem report

ruled out any foul play. After a two-week quiet, a political controversy erupted over the death, as a Bihar Police team constituted to probe the case on a complaint by the actor’s family alleged it got no cooperation from its Mumbai counterpart.

The jurisdictional turf war spilled into the legal arena as the Supreme Court was approached to decide if CBI could investigate the matter. The issue became deeply acrimonious and divisive at multiple levels — between the Rajput and Chakraborty families, between the actors’ respective sets of fans, between the governments of the two states in question, and between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its former ally Shiv Sena — and left the entertainment industry split vertically.

The case opened up a raging debate in and about the industry, devolving into a war of words and allegations between two camps largely made up of “insiders” (with generational links to Bollywood) and “outsiders” (first-generation actors and filmmakers). Chakraborty and her supporters alleged that the Bihar government was trying to hijack the emotive issue for political capital ahead of the upcoming state assembly elections.

Chakraborty’s lawyer Satish Maneshinde said in a statement to the media after Wednesday’s ruling that the court referred to the fact that his client called for a CBI probe. Chakraborty, in her written arguments submitted before the Supreme Court, had said she was not opposed to a CBI probe provided it was ordered by the Supreme Court.