Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sep 29: Joining the JD(U) by the former Bihar director general of police Gupteshwar Pandey possibly to contest the coming elections to the state Assembly, has given a political colour to the investigation into the death of the Bollywood actor Sushant Sigh Rajput but the probe by the CBI so far do not seem to be going in favour of the ruling dispensation.
Though nothing has come out officially about the progress into the investigation so far, the reports available through the CBI sources indicated that the agency had not received enough evidence to conclude his death as murder. In yet another setback to the protagonists of the murder theory, the panel of doctors set up by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences has reportedly not found any trace of organic poison in Sushant’s body.
According to various new agency reports on Tuesday, the AIIMS panel of doctors, who were to re-evaluate Sushant Singh Rajput’s post-mortem and viscera reports based on the 20% viscera sample available with them, submitted their findings to the CBI on Monday ruling out the possibility of he having being poisoned to death before his body was hanged with the ceiling fan in his bedroom in the suburban Bandra in Mumbai on June 14.
Though the CBI has not yet issued any clean chit to the post-mortem report of the Cooper hospital in Mumbai which is believed to have concluded it as a case of suicide on the basis of which the Mumbai police was investigating the case, the AIIMS has also rejected the claims of the lawyer of Sushant’s father that some of its panel doctor had found his death to be “200 per cent case of strangulation.”
The AIIMS panel, headed by Dr Sudhir Gupta, was constituted on the request of the CBI in August to study Sushant’s autopsy and viscera reports. The findings made by the team have not been officially made public yet.
The only statement given out by Sudhir Gupta in the matter was that, “AIIMS & CBI are in agreement on the Sushant Singh Rajput death case but more deliberations are needed. There is a need to look into some legal aspects for a logical legal conclusion.”
Sushant’s family lawyer Vikas Singh, who had filed the petition in the Supreme Court on behalf of deceased’s father K K Singh, had on September 25 claimed that the AIIMS doctors had found the cause of Sushant’s death was “200% strangulation and not suicide.” According to a report, Singh claimed that a doctor who was part of the AIIMS team had told him long back that the photos sent by Singh indicate 200% death by strangulation and not suicide. However Sudhir Gupta has termed these claims by Singh as “incorrect”.
Dr Sudhir Gupta in an interview to a news magazine reportedly reacted to advocate Vikas Singh’s claims and said, “The investigation is still going on. What he is saying is not correct. We can’t conclude simply on murder or suicide based on just ligature marks and scene of crime. Need more investigation which is still going on and not concluded.”
Acting at the behest of the ruling dispensation, Pandey then as the DGP had made critical remarks against the investigation into the death of the “Bihar pride” by the Mumbai police and had favoured the demand of the Sushant’s family for a CBI probe. The demand had also received support from the JD(U)-BJP Bihar coalition government which disagreed with the Mumbai police investigating it as a possible case of suicide.
Pandey after insisting that he had no political ambitions behind taking VRS from the police services within a month after coming to limelight with acrimonious statements on Sushant’s death, finally joined the JD(U) on Monday. And with his joining the ruling coalition giving political colour to Sushant’s death, the lawyer representing his former girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty has demanded setting up of a new medical board to look into the case in view of Vikas Singh’s claim of it being a case of “200% strangulation.” Rhea’s lawyer Satish Maneshinde in a statement said, ”The disclosure of a 200 % strangulation conclusion by an AIIMS doctor in the team headed by Dr Gupta in the SSR case, on the basis of photographs, is a dangerous trend. To keep the investigations impartial and free from inference, the CBI must constitute a new medical board. The agencies are being pressurised to reach a pre-determined result for obvious reasons on the eve of Bihar Elections. We have seen the VRS of DG Pandey unfolding a few days back. There should not be a repetition of such steps.”
Report of the AIIMS panel is likely to assume much significance because it may determine the direction in which the CBI will further investigate the case. The CBI so far has not made any disclosure about the investigation except to make a statement on Monday that it was “conducting professional investigation related to death of Rajput in which all aspects are being looked at and no aspect has been ruled out as of date.”
The Maharashtra MVA government led by Shiv Sena, which was on the back foot after the Supreme Court’s order last month handing over the probe to the CBI from the Mumbai police, has also started taking a swipe at the protagonists of the murder theory. After a long silence, its home minister Anil Deshmukh on Tuesday sought to know what happened after the CBI took over the probe and said he was “eagerly waiting to know the outcome of the agency’s investigation.”
Taking to Twitter, Deshmukh said, “What happened after the Sushant Singh death case probe was handed over to the CBI? People have been asking whether the actor committed suicide or was killed.”
“We are also waiting eagerly to know the outcome of the CBI probe,” he added.
Deshmukh had in the past defended his Mumbai Polices investigation into the case, saying the force conducted the probe in a “professional manner.”
