THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF SUSHANT SINGH RAJPUT
How the demise of a rising star went from a tragedy to sensational tinseltown controversy—and now the subject of a Supreme Courtmonitored CBI probe
Did the Bollywood star commit suicide or was he a victim of foul play? An investigation into the key questions that refuse to die down
TThe twists and turns in the Sushant Singh Rajput case would outfox even the most skilled of Bollywood’s storytellers. The death of the 34-year-old actor at the height of his popularity stunned the country. His fans thought it was a suicide brought on by immense inner mental torment—an affliction he hid from the world. Then, as the drama unfolded amid a pandemic and a lockdown, an army of warriors started playing detective on social as well as conventional media. These self-appointed sleuths first billed his death as an outcome of the “movie mafia” in Mumbai filmdom, denying talented outsiders such as Sushant their due. Then, after an unexplained hiatus of 40 days, Sushant’s family alleged foul play. The spotlight then shifted to Sushant’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and her family, whom Sushant’s father Krishna Kishore Singh accused of siphoning off Rs 15 crore from his account and having abetted his suicide. In between, a convoluted potboiler began to simmer, one involving the death of Disha Salian, Sushant’s manager briefly, a few actors and a political battle between two states and their police machinery. Suddenly, the word ‘murder’ began doing the rounds. On August 19, the case took its most dramatic turn when the
Supreme Court, acting on Rhea’s petition challenging an investigation by the Bihar police, handed over the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The CBI must now find answers to the questions that have haunted headlines more than two months after Sushant died.
What is the evidence that Sushant took his own life?
Nothing on June 14 suggested that the day would be any different for Sushant, who stayed on the sixth floor of a duplex apartment in the Mount Blanc housing society of Bandra in Mumbai. Around 8 am, he asked his domestic help Neeraj for a glass of cold water. For breakfast, he asked his cook Keshav to give him coconut water, juice and bananas. He didn’t have the bananas. When Keshav went to ask him around 10 am what he wanted for lunch, he found the room locked. Assuming that Sushant wanted to sleep till late, everyone let him be. But when the actor did not open the door or answer the calls of Siddharth Pithani, his creative content manager and flatmate since January 2020, the staff grew concerned enough to hunt for a key and alert Sushant’s sister Meetu, who lives in Mumbai suburb Goregaon, 16 km away. They decided that the lock had to be broken. Around 1 pm, a local locksmith broke the lock to the door. But rather than go into the room immediately, Pithani paid the locksmith Rs 2,000 and saw him off. He then came back, and went into Sushant’s room, with house manager Dipesh Sawant and Neeraj following him. It was then that they found Sushant hanging from the ceiling fan.
Pithani says he brought the body down, severed the green kurta Sushant had used to hang himself and tried to revive him. Sushant’s sister Meetu, too, had reached by then. There was no suicide note, a fact that has fuelled some controversy. The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Kalina ruled out homicide in its report as nothing in the samples suggested foul play. FSL sources say the “tests of nails and the stomach wash showed no struggle or poisoning, respectively”. The post-mortem report reached a similar conclusion, listing the cause of death as “asphyxia due to hanging”. Based on the half-open eyelids, secretion