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 Court-monitored CBI probe

- Suhani Singh, Kiran D. Tare And Amitabh Srivastava

The 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.