Suicide and murder seem to run, like talent, in the Bollywood fraternity. Like Dawood Ibrahim's links to Bollywood, the law cannot prove that Sushant Singh Rajput (SSR) was murdered because he knew too much. So, whether he hanged himself or his suicide was staged like a Bollywood blockbuster, we may never know the truth. The two British-era laws of the Indian Penal Code and the Indian Evidence Act will be twisted to ensure SSR stays dumb forever.
Gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim fund big-budget Bollywood films, whose overseas distribution rights they take over once a film becomes a box-office hit. The link between Bollywood film financing, cricket match-fixing and funding political parties during elections is obvious when we accept that Dawood Ibrahim's daughter married Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad's son.
This is why the death of an actor like Sushant Singh Rajput has sinister overtones. With the finding of his diary written two years ago, revealing the actor's plan to move from Bollywood to Hollywood, more questions arise.
Section 309 of the IPC, which earlier criminalised a failed suicide bid, has now become obsolete with the Mental Health Care Act, 2018 overriding the section.
The point is, the people of India have a right to know how Sushant Singh Rajput and his former manager, Disha Salian, died. The right to life and the right to know are both covered under Article 21, which allowed Rajput to meticulously plan a production company to make his Hollywood debut in 2020.
Although written in 2018, the personal diary of Sushant Singh Rajput reveals an organised mind which is certainly not contemplating suicide as per the assertions of the Shiv Sena and others who bat for Mumbai Police. NCP MP Majeed Memon's tweet that after his death, Sushant Singh Rajput became more famous than in life, is in poor taste. The Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress are in power in Maharashtra, which fuels suspicion as to their interest in this tragedy given that neither the Mumbai police nor the CBI have finished their investigation.
And so, like the 1996 alleged suicide of Ramesh Kini, where the CBI gave a clean chit to Raj Thackeray, the Judge Loya death in 2014, the so-called 'encounter' of gangster Vikas Dubey on July 10, 2020, murders may be arranged as suicides or encounters.
It is a fact that gangsters fund political parties, real estate snd Bollywood films. So these gangsters can easily "fix" the police or CBI probes, the way they do cricket matches. And so the truth will never emerge because the bitter truth is those who head governments also get funds from gangsters like Vikas Dubey, who cannot be allowed to tell a court which chief minister they paid off. Unlike reel life where evil is vanquished, in real life, the converse is true. Bollywood murders may be camouflaged as suicides, just as Shiv Sainik Ashutosh Rane who was alleged to have killed Ramesh Kini was himself killed in a hit-and-run at Lonavla on January 15, 2011, while Sheila Kini, who continued to live in Matunga's Laxmi Niwas, died several months later in 2011, her son Nikhil, shifted to the USA and Matoshree Builders developed Laxmi Niwas into a skyscraper. Period.
Mumbai Police assert that the deaths of Sushant Singh Rajput and his former manager Disha Salian are not linked. But the fact is that both deaths occurred within a week of each other. A neighbour alleged in a sting by a journalist that Disha's body was found outside the gate of her building. Two ambulance attendants are alleged to have told the media that Sushant Singh Rajput's body had turned yellow and his legs were bent at the knees. Apparently, this does not take place in a suicide by hanging. These statements may be false but need to be taken down before being discarded. But they will never figure in a court file for the same reason they were never taken down. Like Judge S P Nikam who ruled that Ramesh Kini was "prone to writing suicide notes," politicians with vested interests continue to embellish Mumbai Police's version of suicide. Despite contraverting evidence of Sushant's private diary which has some pages ripped out.
Narayan Rane's sons have alleged the mild-mannered Aaditya Thackeray's name cropped up in the petition filed in the Supreme Court asking for a CBI probe into the actor's death. But the junior Thackeray, who has made his debut as a cabinet minister in his father's government, has stoutly refuted any connection with Sushant's alleged suicide. All this drama is reminiscent of Raj Thackeray's alleged involvement in the 1996 Ramesh Kini death.
The nub of the issue is: only the naive would believe that the Caged Bamboozlers of India, known as the CBI are free of political interference. Several IPS officers have admitted directly getting calls from top politicians wanting to know the progress made in sensitive cases. But the interference in the local police is more evident as law and order is a state subject in the Constitution. And when the BJP and the Shiv Sena share ideologies but oppose each other in Msharashtra to grab power, how impartial a CBI probe will be, is any body's guess.
Laws such as the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946, which gave birth to the CBI, the Indian Police Act, 1861 and the Bombay Police Act, 1951 have all turned obsolete because they subordinate the police to political parties. These laws must be drastically revamped to insulate the police from political interference during or after investigations. This is easier said than done because political parties who get money and muscle power from gangsters like Vikas Dubey will never relinquish their power over the police.
And until that is done, justice will forever elude causes that are just. Like Sushant Singh Rajput. Or Ramesh Kini. Or perhaps Disha Salian and Judge Loya who administered justice but may have been denied it in death.
