The demise of a young movie star has transfixed India like no other news in a year of bad headlines.
The abrupt death of Sushant Singh Rajput, 34, on June 14 has spurred a debate about the stigma of mental health, the rarefied insider world of Bollywood and, more recently, condemnation of the media for its non-stop coverage of the dueling accusations between Rajput’s family and his girlfriend.
Mumbai police initially reported Rajput’s death as accidental and local media called it a suicide, but the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is now investigating if there was any foul play, and questioning Rajput’s girlfriend, Rhea Chakraborty, and others.
Photo: Reuters
Chakraborty was on Tuesday arrested by the Indian Narcotics Control Bureau, which is investigating a drugs case linked to the probe of Rajput’s death.
She denies any wrongdoing and her lawyer, Satish Maneshinde, called the arrest “a travesty of justice.”
Along the way, the story has become a media obsession in India, fed by a wave of TV coverage still swelling almost three months after Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai apartment.
In the past few weeks, India’s TV channels have given more airtime to the Rajput case than India’s surging COVID-19 caseload, a plane crash and top political stories, the Broadcast Audience Research Council India said.
India’s boisterous TV networks, which include more than 350 news channels in English and several local languages, have flashed photographs of Rajput’s body, analyzed his medical prescriptions, and even used voodoo dolls and graphics of a skull to hype allegations that “black magic” was performed on the actor.
The CBI, the High Court in Mumbai and the Press Council of India have all criticized coverage of the investigation.
“I spent 21 years in television and I’ve never seen a race to the bottom this bad,” said Nidhi Razdan, who recently left Indian news network New Delhi Television to teach journalism.
“It is a media trial. What else is it?” she said. “I haven’t seen this kind of viciousness in coverage before.”
Before his death, Rajput, who gained famed for portraying former India cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni in a biopic, and his girlfriend were more likely to be depicted as a down-to-earth — if Bollywood-beautiful — couple, cuddling tousled-haired at home or sitting playfully in jeans on a rundown park bench.
Chakraborty, 28, has been regularly hounded by reporters when she appeared in public, with news commentators opining on her innocence or guilt.
Rajput’s family claims that she poisoned him, used black magic and is responsible for his death.
“There has been a conspiracy to break me and my family and my spirit,” Chakraborty said in an interview with television anchor Rajdeep Sardesai last month.
“It is the systematic breakdown of an innocent family, an innocent girl who loved an innocent boy,” she said.
On Sunday, she was jostled by a pack of journalists as she tried to enter a narcotics department office in Mumbai, where police struggled to disperse the crowd.
“Sickening,” journalist Swati Chaturvedi wrote on Twitter.
“The visuals of Rhea being hounded makes my stomach churn and puke,” senior Indian Express journalist Alaka Sahani said.
The CBI last month said that it was investigating allegations of abetment of suicide and criminal conspiracy.
Its announcement came after requests from Rajput’s family and Chakraborty.
In a statement last week, the CBI said that some media reports on its probe were “speculative” and “not credible.”
The CBI said that it “has not shared any details of investigation with media.”
The Press Council of India has urged the media not to “conduct its own parallel trial.”
Some television editors have defended the coverage.
Arnab Goswami, editor of Republic TV and a widely watched anchor known for his sharp-elbowed commentary, last week credited his channel’s coverage with ensuring that Rajput’s death was not “whitewashed” as a suicide.
“I pushed, I pressurized, I connected the dots,” he told news Web site OpIndia. “In the process, if I’ve done a media trial, I’m happy I have done one.”
Goswami did not respond to a request for comment.
His main show, The Debate, ran last week with the hashtag #ArrestRheaNext.
Soon after her arrest on Tuesday, the channel started using the tag #RheaArrested.
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