Change of political guard in Maharashtra might whip up public, social media, even the Rajput family sentiments, but we fear all this hullabaloo 2.0 will not give the case nor the family the much-needed CLOSURE.
By Mayur Lookhar
Bhagwan ke ghar mein dair hai, andher nahi. This writer says this whilst sitting in Andheri. The closest English translation to the opening Hindi proverb would be ‘there is delay in God’s house, not darkness’. Maybe the more proverbially correct translation should be ‘God’s mill grinds slowly but surely’.
It’s this feeling that has ignited hope in the Rajput family and the tons of opportunist SSRians. A change in guard in Maharashtra’s polity has paved the way for a fresh probe into the tragic death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The earlier probes, all pointed that the actor mostly died by suicide in the wee hours of 14 June, 2020. He was 34. However, the conspiracy theorists, opportunists are licking their fingers again after one humble hospital staff raised a storm by claiming that there was hanky-panky in Rajput’s post mortem, and the actor was perhaps murdered. No surprise for guessing which noisy channel has sprung into action at the drop of a hat.
Roopkumar Shah, a mortuary attendant at the government run Cooper Hospital at Juhu, Mumbai has made sensational claims while speaking to various media outlets. This comes few days after Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis spoke in the state assembly expressing his government’s desire to reopen the Disha Salian case, set a SIT [Special Investigating Team] to eke out the truth.
“When Sushant Singh Rajput passed away, we had received five bodies in the Cooper Hospital for postmortem. Out of those five bodies, one was a VIP body. When we went to perform a postmortem, we learnt he was Sushant and there were several marks on his body and two to three marks on his neck as well,” Shah told the Hindi news channel TV9 Bharatvarsh.
Shah also claimed that the post-mortem was done in a hush manner, and there was no video recording of the process. Citing his long experience, Shah suspected that this could be murder.
With due respect to Mr. Shah, is he the competent authority to pass a final judgment on whether a person was murdered or not? Surely, he has seen enough of bodies in his long career. Probably, he speaks out of that experience, but that doesn’t make him the competent authority on any post mortem report. At best, Shah and his colleagues can discuss conspiracy theories between themselves. Also, why has he waited two years to speak his mind?
Shah has put the reputation of the noted hospital, the doctors at risk. How will the hospital authorities reach to such conduct by him? Well, that is not our concern, but what worries us is that Shah’s comment could once again trigger all the bandar bant [monkey business] that we saw two years ago. It has rekindled hopes of the Sushant Singh Rajput family, who all along felt that their son died in mysterious circumstances. Sushant’s father K.K. Singh has already spoken to the media, pinning hopes on the new government in Maharashtra to conduct a fair probe.
We are all for the truth to come out. So, a SIT probe is likely to be ordered by the new Maharashtra government. In principle of justice, we, too, want the hidden truth, if any, to come out. If there was malice, we want justice for SSR, Disha Salian and their respective families. However, we fear that once again the family is being given false hope, and all this noise is only created to serve vested interests.
Shiv Sena [U] leader Aditya Thackeray’s name had cropped up during the Disha Salian accidental death case. Two weeks later, her former temporary client Sushant Singh Rajput had allegedly died by suicide. The then Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress coalition government has since collapsed with rival Bharatiya Janata Party forming a government with Eknath Shinde led rebel faction from the Shiva Sena. The BJP-Shiv Sena rebel faction government came to power in August 2022. Reopening the Sushant Singh Rajput, Disha Salina cases immediately would have smacked of vendetta. Four months later, the ruling faction is perhaps reopening the SSR, Disha Salian cases keeping the 2023 Lok Sabha, and the 2024 state elections in mind.
Lease aside the politics but we like to draw one’s attention to the past actions. Naturally, the initial probe was handled [mishandled as alleged by then rival parties] by Mumbai police. Facing state elections then, the Bihar police swung into action sending its officers to Mumbai when they didn’t even have the jurisdiction to probe. Their line was that Sushant Singh Rajput’s father had filed a FIR in a Patna police station. The Bihar police’s high handedness made for interesting Bihar vs Maharashtra headlines, but it ended in a whimper. The Supreme Court had reprimanded certain conduct of the Maharashtra police, but it made it clear that the Bihar police couldn’t by pass legal protocols. A CBI inquiry was initiated but after months of investigation, they, too, didn’t find any foul play and ruled that the actor did die by suicide. Who formed this CBI team? The union government in Delhi. It begs the question, if the esteemed officers in that CBI probe didn’t find any conspiracy, what are the odds of the new SIT finding things otherwise?
Rajput’s former girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, who was accused by the Rajput family of abetting Sushant’s alleged suicide, will be panicking again. We never had any empathy for Chakraborty as we felt she too had a part in Sushant Singh Rajput’s now suspected depressive state. Had she shown some proactivity in alerting the family on Sushant’s suspected mental health, maybe, the man would have been saved. She had Bihar police, then CBI and also the Enforcement Directorate probing her. She did spend some jail time, but none of the government appointed central agencies found any incriminating evidence against her. Eventually, the lady walked out on bail. Now, it’s not just Chakraborty, but perhaps her new rumored boyfriend Bunty Sajdeh, too, would be sweating that he doesn’t embroiled in this mess.
Meanwhile, in 2020, Disha Salian’s parents had issued a statement slamming the media, and categorically claimed that they were happy with the probe that was conducted by the Mumbai police. What would they be thinking now? Is there hope for the truth to come out? Or are they fuming over their dead daughter being once again used for personal gains?
It’s not just politics that will be at play again. We fear the then so-called friends of Sushant Singh Rajput will be milking their share of cheap publicity again. Trust some new SSR friends to emerge from nowhere. They’ll be invited to news debates. They will claim that their life is in jeopardy, and demand security. Interestingly, we don’t recall any harm to these ‘friends’ then and after the case had died down.
The media will see this as another opportunity to rake in more viewership. The voyeuristic news channels will recreate in-studio drama. Don’t be surprised if some anchor gives a demo of SSR’s hanging. The worst vultures of the lot are the YouTube brigade. The SSR case served as a great opportunity for YouTubers to rake in million-dollar views. More Youtube, Whats App university self-proclaimed experts will mushroom.
Lastly, the ever nationalistic, #BoycottBollywood lot will be up in arms again, thrashing Bollywood with new theories and expletives. It will also be an opportunity for both liked minded and opposing Bollywood artistes to extract their pound of flesh. And how can we forget the soothsayers and the psychics across home and the seven seas gazing into their crystal balls or talking to SSR’s spirit. So, the hullabaloo 2.0, the tamasha will play out all over again. Sadly, our heart goes out to the respective family of Sushant Singh Rajput and Disha Salian. While we too seek the undisputed truth, we fear that the family will witness another tamasha, but get no truth, no justice, and importantly no closure from the terrible personal loss.
