Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 3: Proving the initial investigations by the Mumbai police correct, the doctors’ panel re-evaluating the deceased Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s post-mortem report, has ruled out murder and has told the Central Bureau of Investigation that it was a case of suicide.
The re-evaluation at the behest of the CBI was carried out by a panel of doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences led by Dr Sudhir Gupta.
“Sushant’s death is a case of suicide. Murder completely ruled out,” Dr Gupta told a news magazine. He said the AIIMS doctors had submitted their findings to the CBI on September 29. Giving reasons for ruling out murder, he said, “There were no injuries on the body other than of hanging. There were no marks of struggle/scuffle on the body and clothes of the deceased.”
He added, “The presence of any seductive material was not detected by Bombay Forensic Sciences Laboratory and AIIMS toxicology lab. The complete examination of ligature mark over the neck was consistent with hanging.”
Sushant’s close family members in Bihar, including his father K K Singh, had been suspecting it to be a case of murder and disappointed with the line of investigation by the Mumbai police proceeding on the assumption of suicide had appealed to the Supreme Court to direct the CBI to investigate the case.
Vikas Singh, the lawyer representing Sushant’s father, whose petition for CBI inquiry was upheld by the apex court, had last week claimed that a doctor from the AIIMS panel had told him that the team had concluded it to be a case of murder. He claimed the doctor to have told him that the ligature marks on Sushant’s neck were consistent with strangulation. “AIIMS doctor told me that Sushant’s death was by strangulation and 200% it is a case of murder,” Singh had said in a media conference.
Dr Gupta, however, had refuted his claim then. He told some media channels that “No conclusion or conclusion opinion of homicide or suicide could be made by seeing ligature marks and scene of occurrence. It’s difficult for doctors and next to impossible for general people, needed solely internal link discretion and forensic interpretation.” He had also denied last week that the panel had reached any conclusion as claimed by Singh and had stated that the investigation on the forensic evidences were still being carried out by the panel.
Not only his close family members, many others including Sushant’s fans through twitter and other social media messages had been urging the CBI to initiate a murder probe in the case.
The 34-year old Sushant was found dead in his Bandra apartment in Mumbai on June 14. His family has accused Rhea Chakraborty of abetting his suicide and misappropriating his funds. Rhea is currently in jail, on drugs-related charges as an off-shoot of the investigations into Sushant’s unnatural death.
Sushant’s death was originally ruled a suicide by the Mumbai Police, before the case was taken over by the CBI. The CBI is likely to continue its probe into “abetment to suicide,” a section of the media reported quoting CBI sources. “So far, no evidence has come up to prove it to be a case of murder. If during the course of investigation, we get any evidence, murder charge will be added. For now, abetment to suicide and other charges in the FIR are being probed,” the report quoted a source as saying.
Satish Maneshinde, the lawyer representing Rhea, has said he would await the CBI’s official report. “Truth cannot be changed, we await the official report of the CBI,” he said. Rhea and her family members had maintained that they had no hand in the unnatural death of Sushant and that his former girlfriend had severed all relations with him and left his house on June 8, nearly a week before his body was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his bedroom.