TWISTS IN THE SUSHANT TRAGEDY
A star’s demise that has morphed into a national obsession. The many turns that have kept Sushant Singh Rajput’s mysterious death alive in the public imagination
APR. 2019
Sushant Singh Rajput and Rhea Chakraborty start dating
OCT. 2019
Sushant, Rhea and her brother Showik cut short their holiday in Italy and return to Mumbai. Rhea has claimed she first saw signs of Sushant’s mental illness during this trip.
NOV.-DEC. 2019
Rhea and Sushant consult Dr Susan Walker Moffat, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. She diagnoses him with bipolar disorder and “suffering terribly during his bouts of depression and hypomania”. Rhea moves into Sushant’s home in Bandra.
JAN. 20-24, 2020
Sushant rings in his 34th birthday with two of his sisters in Chandigarh
JAN. 21
Rhea takes to Instagram to wish Sushant on his birthday with a photo of their Europe holiday in October. He replies with “Thank youuuuuuu my Rockstarrrr”. It’s the first sign of them acknowledging their relationship in public.
MAR. 22
Sushant shares his first post on Instagram in over six months
FEB. 25
IPS officer O.P. Singh, Sushant’s brother-in-law, sends messages on WhatsApp to Paramjit Singh Dahiya, then Mumbai DCP Zone 9, sharing his concern for Sushant’s well-being
MAY 5
Sushant gives a sense of his Covid lockdown regimen, sharing a few “meta skills” which include “writing a journal” and “intermittent fasting”
JUNE 8
Rhea leaves Sushant’s Bandra residence. Sushant’s sister Meetu Singh arrives by evening and stays for a few days.
JUNE 9
Disha Salian, Sushant’s former manager, falls to her death from the 14th floor of her fiance’s building. Death described as accidental.
JUNE 10
Siddharth Pithani, Sushant’s creative content manager, says Sushant is at his “lowest” after he sees media reports associating Disha and him. They are said to have interacted only on a few occasions.
JUNE 14
Sushant found dead at his Mumbai home. Mumbai police lodge an accidental death report.
JUNE 15
★ Sushant’s father K.K. Singh cremates his body in Mumbai ★ Actor Kangana Ranaut claims Sushant was a victim of a ‘movie mafia’ that promotes “nepo[tism] kids”
JUNE 20
Bihar deputy CM Sushil Modi visits Sushant’s Patna home to pay his condolences
JUNE 25
Final post-mortem report confirms asphyxia due to hanging as cause of Sushant’s death, calling it a clear case of suicide. Report rules out foul play. The viscera report affirms this.
JULY 24
Dil Bechara, Sushant’s final film, releases on Disney+ Hotstar. Available for free, it becomes the most streamed film in India, with over 50 million users accessing it, as per Ormax Media.
JULY 16
Rhea tags Union home minister Amit Shah on Twitter and Instagram, demands CBI probe. Wants to understand ‘what pressures prompted Sushant to take this step’.
JUNE 30
In an interview to a website, Kangana says she “never interacted” with Sushant, but they shared “many close friends” who kept her posted on “what was going on in his life”
JULY 25
Bihar police register FIR against Rhea and five others (including her family members) alleging abetment to suicide following K.K. Singh’s complaint. He alleges Rhea and her family siphoned off Rs 15 crore of Sushant’s money
JULY 31
★ ED files money laundering case against Rhea, her brother, father and mother ★ A four-member Bihar police team lands in Mumbai to probe the FIR filed in Patna ★ Bihar deputy CM Sushil Modi accuses Maharashtra government of obstructing the probe by Bihar police, demands a CBI inquiry
AUG. 2
Patna SP Vinay Tewari lands in Mumbai for the Sushant Singh probe, is forcibly quarantined by the BMC for 14 days
AUG. 3
Mumbai police chief says no misappropriation of funds from Sushant’s bank accounts
AUG. 4
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar recommends CBI probe into the case
AUG. 5
Centre tells Supreme Court it has accepted Bihar’s recommendation and transferred the case to the CBI
AUG. 6
CBI re-registers FIR against Rhea
AUG. 7
★ CBI moves petition in SC, asking to be made party in the Sushant case ★ ED questions Rhea for eight hours in money-laundering case ★ Bombay HC adjourns hearing seeking CBI probe to Aug. 21. ★ Vinay Tewari is released from quarantine, asked to return to Patna
AUG. 19
Supreme Courts hands over probe to the CBI
of semen on the shorts, the viscera report and the contents of the stomach, the forensic experts concluded that there is no foul play.
However, on July 25, almost six weeks after Sushant’s death, his father K.K. Singh filed a complaint with the Patna police, stating that he suspected foul play. The family’s advocate, Vikas Singh, outlined the family’s reasons for suspicion. For one, they characterise Pithani’s behaviour with the locksmith as peculiar. “Normally, you would open the door first before seeing the locksmith off. Why was he sent away first?” he asks. Singh cites other alleged inconsistencies in the Mumbai police probe following the actor’s death. The Mumbai police say Sushant climbed on to his bed to hang himself. Singh argues that at six feet, Sushant was tall enough to touch the fan if he stood on his bed. According to him, when people want to hang themselves, they stand on a stool, slip the noose around their neck and then fling the stool away. Sushant, Singh adds, would have had to be in an inclined position to hang himself; even so he’d still have the support of the bed.
Dr Harsh Sharma, director, State Forensic Science Laboratory at Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, who has investigated over 800 suicide deaths, dismisses his claim. He told YouTube channel Crime Tak that once the noose is tied around the neck and connected to the anchor point, whether a person is standing, sitting or kneeling, the neck is compressed and all impulses to the brain are cut off, sending the body into a state of paralysis. The lack of bruises and abrasions on Sushant’s body and the halfopen eye were typical of suicidal hanging, he added.
Did Sushant suffer from a serious mental disorder?
Sushant’s family now even questions the Mumbai police’s initial conclusion that the actor had a serious mental illness that could have led to him taking his life. That Sushant’s interests extended beyond cinema is wellestablished. On his Instagram, one was more likely to find nuggets on his progress with 50 dream projects, navelgazing or insights on astronomy than film-related posts. What would push a man with so many interests to take this tragic step?
Rhea Chakraborty, who describes herself as his “livein partner”, believes Sushant had been suffering from a serious mental disorder for the past eight months. She recalls that she first noticed it when she, Sushant and her brother Showik had taken a trip to Europe in October 2019. Rhea told officials investigating the case that the first episode occurred in a hotel room in Florence after they had seen the Goya painting, ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’. Sushant, she said, was shaken and had hallucinated over the next few days. His condition got serious enough for them to cut short their trip. Between November and December 2019, Sushant and Rhea consulted Mumbai-based clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Susan Walker Moffat, who diagnosed the actor as having a bipolar disorder. In a video statement shared with YouTube channel Mojo Story, Moffat said Sushant was “suffering terribly during his bouts of depression and hypomania”. Moffat was one of at least four doctors Sushant reportedly consulted till March 2020. Rhea also revealed that she consulted Moffat for her own battle with anxiety and panic attacks.
In an August 1 interview to Aaj Tak television channel, Sushant’s help Neeraj said the actor appeared to be ‘down’ ever since returning from his Europe trip. He also said that no party took place on the night before the suicide, as was alleged in some circles; Sushant barely stepped out during the lockdown.
In a June 18 post on Facebook that she later deleted, Sushant’s sister Shweta Singh Kirti wrote, “I know you were in a lot of pain and I know you were a fighter and you were bravely fighting it.” On August 3, Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh told the media that their inquiries had established Sushant as suffering from ‘depression’. Pithani was witness to more telltale signs of Sushant’s fragile mental state. The actor had asked him in January to urgently come to Mumbai (from Ahmedabad) and work with him. He told Pithani that he wanted to quit acting. “He said I don’t have anyone right now,” Pithani recalls. In a video interview to Zoom, he said the news of Disha Salian’s death on June 9 affected Sushant so much that he cried and even fainted. “He was upset about his name being used again and again,” Pithani said.
The Rajput family lawyer Singh denies all these allegations. “Sushant did not have any mental health issues till the end of 2019,” he told india today. “If he was feeling depressed after 2019 or had any issues, Rhea is responsible for it.”
Could mental illness have led Sushant to commit suicide?
There were reports from some quarters that Sushant’s mental torment was a result of the setbacks he faced in his career apart from discrimination in the industry. And it was this pressure that finally got to him. It is true that over the years, two big projects, that were particularly dear to Sushant and in which he had made con
siderable creative and physical investments, did fall through. One was Shekhar Kapur’s Paani, which was shelved after differences between Kapur and producer Aditya Chopra, and the other was Chandamama Door Ke, a space drama for which Rajput had visited the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for training. Serial entrepreneur Varun Mathur, Sushant’s partner in his other company, Innsaei Ventures, started in 2018, cited a conflict of dates as the reason why the actor left the film.
But despite these prominent setbacks, Sushant regularly received offers of new roles in films. Rumi Jaffrey was going to direct a romantic comedy featuring him and Rhea. National Award-winning filmmaker Anand Gandhi had hoped Sushant would, as a friend, consider doing his next film set in the backdrop of the pandemic. Just a day before his death, producer Ramesh Taurani and director Nikhil Advani, in a call, had pitched a new project to Sushant.
Mental health experts say setbacks in career may not necessarily be the prime reason for mental torment. “There is no physical parameter one can look [at] and say one’s depressed. Just because you are depressed does not mean you cannot function,” says Mumbaibased psychologist Dr Shraddha Sidhwani. A practitioner for 17 years, she adds that the media’s denial and trivialisation of mental health issues “is reversing the work psychiatrists have done in beating the stigma over the past decade”. Sidhwani says it’s common for patients to seek second opinions and change psychiatrists since they feel they have “lost control over” their minds. “It is more difficult for high achievers to accept the illness,” she adds. Flatmate Pithani says Sushant had stopped taking medication in March.
Once known as manic depressive illness, the bipolar disorder that Sushant’s psychiatrist diagnosed is associated with severe mood swings ranging
from manic highs to depressive lows. There are no conclusive triggers for the illness, but experts largely attribute it to a chemical imbalance in the brain, genetics, or deep disturbances in the neurotransmitters. The consensus is that symptoms show up in the second decade of life. “It could begin with episodes of mania—excessive spending, high energy, delusions of grandeur and disturbed sleep; and, after a while, depressive tendencies take over—low energy, low concentration, poor memory and a tendency to harm oneself. In some people it occurs the other way round,” explains Dr B.N. Gangadhar, director of NIMHANS, Bengaluru.
It is hard to diagnose bipolar patients because the symptoms need not always be evident. Many patients hide their symptoms for fear of stigma or out of shame. Dr Purnima Nagaraja, a Hyderabadbased psychiatrist, says: “Bipolar patients could also have personality disorders. Some of them could have more tendencies for depression… it differs from patient to patient.”
Medication and therapy are essential for bipolar patients, especially among those who are strongly suicidal. “If a person has an established disorder then, through appropriate counselling and medication, any mental health patient can lead a fully functional and stable life,” says Dr Gangadhar. If left untreated, the symptoms in most patients are self-limiting, he adds.
But even if the symptoms aren’t always permanent, for most patients, their severity, particularly the depressive episodes, are unbearable to withstand. It can lead to severe feelings of guilt, abandonment, a sense of not being wanted and of extreme hopelessness. A 2015 study titled ‘Suicide Attempts in Bipolar Disorder’, published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a US-based resource for the scientific research community, estimates that between 25 per cent and 60 per cent of individuals with bipolar disorder attempt suicide at least once in their lives, and 4 per cent
to 19 per cent see it through to the end. Psychiatrists say depression in bipolar patients can be extreme. It often overrules logic and positive feelings in a patient, prompting some to turn suicidal, as they are unable to find hope or feel good about themselves and their lives.
Did his relationship with Rhea drive Sushant to suicide?
The 34 years and 146 days of Sushant Singh Rajput’s life are now largely being seen through the time he spent with Rhea Chakraborty, the actress he began dating in April 2019. Rhea and Sushant knew each other from when they were both talents at Yash Raj Studios in 2012. Sushant had a three-film contract with the studio, beginning with Shuddh Desi Romance (2013), while Rhea had been signed on for the Y-Films project Mere Dad Ki Maruti. At the time, Rajput was in a livein relationship with his Pavitra Rishta co-star Ankita Lokhande with whom he would part ways in 2016.
While Sushant’s career took off after he left Yash Raj to do M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story, Rhea’s failed to strike such a high note. Sushant found fame with Kedarnath and Chhichhore, Rhea struggled as her films failed at the box office. Their paths eventually crossed again in mid-April 2019 in Mumbai.
As in many dalliances in the film world, the two didn’t confirm their relationship in public. At the Mind Rocks Youth Summit in Delhi in September 2019, Sushant described his relationship status as “bilkul single” and then clenched his teeth on the side. But, by then, there were enough signs suggesting that love was in the air—photos of Rhea ringing in her birthday on July 1, 2019, in Ladakh with Sushant and friends, the various sightings outside gyms and restaurants and the October trip to Europe. By December 2019, Rhea had moved in with Sushant in his Bandra apartment and stayed there until her departure on June 8 which, she says, she did at Sushant’s request as he wanted her gone before his sister Meetu arrived later in the day.
Things had soured between Rhea and Sushant’s