A Bihar based advocate has filed a case against a number of Bollywood bigwigs alleging that actor Sushant Singh Rajput was driven to suicide by an influential gang that virtually controlled the industry.
The young actor’s death has triggered a debate about nepotism and how “outsiders” are treated in Bollywood with several actors and directors talking about the gang. Now advocate Sudhir Kumar Ojha citing the reasons that the late actor was removed from seven films and the said treatment forced him to take the extreme step of death by suicide, has filed an abetment case against eight people from the industry, including Karan Johar, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Salman Khan and Ekta Kapoor, agencies reported. Ojha said the case was filed against Sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 109 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation).
“In the complaint, I have alleged that Sushant Singh Rajput was removed from around seven films and some of his films were not released. Such a situation was created which forced him to take the extreme step,” the advocate said.
Responding to the allegations, producer Ekta Kapoor said that she is “beyond upset at how convoluted theories can be.”
The Maharashtra government too had decided to probe the angles of professional rivalry along with Sushant’s reported clinical depression.
Announcing the same on Twitter, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said, “While the post mortem report says actor Sushant Singh Rajput committed suicide by hanging himself, there are media reports that he allegedly suffered from clinical depression because of professional rivalry,” he tweeted tagging Mumbai Police in his post.
Sushant who was found hanging at his Bandra residence on Sunday (June 14) in an apparent suicide bid, was cremated on Monday (June 15) at the Pawan Hans crematorium in Mumbai.
While his death was condoled by the film fraternity with many questioning what could have caused him to take such an extreme step, a few including directors Shekhar Kapur and Abhinav Sinha and actors Kangana Ranaut, Ranvir Shorey and Nikhil Dwivedi hinted at the “hypocrisy” and “two-facedness” of the film fraternity.
-India Legal Bureau