Three days after the All India Institute of Medical Sciences' (AIIMS) Forensic Medical Board, in its report ruled out the murder angle in Sushant Singh Rajput's death, it has been reported that over 80,000 fake accounts were created across social media platforms on June 14, to discredit Mumbai Police probing the case.
According to a report by Hindustan Times, the accounts were created as a part of a smear campaign against the city’s police force and Maharashtra government investigating the death of the 34-year-old star, who was found hanging at his Bandra residence.
Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh has asked the cyber cell to further investigate and register relevant cases under the Information Technology Act.
The cyber crime unit in its report found that several posts with “abusive tones” were shared on social media from countries like Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Romania, and France.
Despite being written in foreign languages, the posts were identified based on the use of hashtags like #justiceforsushant #sushantsinghrajput and #SSR.
Singh told the daily that the campaign was run to demoralise the police force, especially at a time when 84 personnel had succumbed to COVID-19, and 6000 were infected.
“This was a motivated campaign with vested interest just to malign the image of Mumbai police and derail our line of investigation,” he said.
DCP Rashmi Karandikar of cyber unit said, "Several social media account holders are trolling the Mumbai Police commissioner on different platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and are using abusive language against him and the force. Hence an FIR has been registered against those account holders under 67 IT act . Most of these accounts are fake and we will be taking action against all those fake account holders. The another FIR has been registered against culprit who used morphed image of the official Twitter account of Mumbai Police commissioner recently. We have started the probe in the both matters."
Commenting on the AIIMS report, Singh hailed the professionalism of both the Mumbai Police and doctors from Cooper Hospital.
"We have come to know that AIIMS has also come to the conclusion about the cause of death as hanging due to asphyxia and suicide. We are not surprised at all by this, this was always the finding of the Cooper team also, which is a very professional team," Singh said.
"ADR (Alternative dispute resolution) investigation normally takes 3-6 months to conclude, sometimes it also takes one to two years to conclude, so there was no delay in investigation," he added.
The top cop said that the Mumbai Police had remained truthful and professional during the course of the investigation.
"We always maintained that our investigation was a very professional one. The doctors at Cooper Hospital did a very professional job, a panel of doctors conducted the post-mortem and gave the report, which was very clear regarding the cause of death. When the Supreme Court directed that Bihar FIR be handed over to CBI, thereafter when CBI came over, we handed over all documents, evidence to CBI and I am sure they are doing a very professional job," Singh said.
He also said that when the progress report of the Mumbai Police's investigation had been submitted to the Supreme Court only five to six people had access to it as it was confidential.
"The apex court found no faults with our investigation, all those who were challenging our investigation then, I challenge them to speak up about our findings. They were criticising it without knowledge, and were doing so with vested interests," he added.
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences' Forensic Medical Board confirmed that actor Sushant Singh Rajput died by suicide, ruling out the murder angle.
"We have concluded our conclusive report. It is a case of hanging and death by suicide," Dr Sudhir Gupta, AIIMS Forensic Head said on Saturday.
"There were no injuries over the body other than hanging. There were no marks of struggle/ scuffle in the body and clothes of the deceased," said Dr Gupta who is chairman of the AIIMS Forensic Medical Board comprising seven doctors.
The board has discussed its findings with the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is investing the late actor's death case.
With inputs from ANI
