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Trigger warning: This article talks about suicide
CBI sources have now said that the AIIMS report on Sushant Singh Rajput’s death corroborates its own findings from the probe into his death, according to reports. The AIIMS report said that there was no foul play in Rajput’s death and he died by suicide.
The Indian Express reported its sources in the CBI as saying that while a forensic audit of Rajput’s bank accounts has not shown anything suspicious, the CBI is now concentrating on finding out what led to the actor killing himself.
Rajput’s family has accused Rhea Chakraborty for abetting suicide, cheating him and taking money from him.
The Indian Express report said that the CBI will now try to probe other factors like his mental health, effects of drug use, and his professional life in Bollywood.
While there were accusations against Chakraborty for laundering Rajput’s money, the CBI sources said that in the transactions of past five years, worth Rs 70 crore, only around Rs 55 lakh were linked to Chakraborty and were expenses for travel, gifts and spas.
The medical board in AIIMS had ruled out murder calling it “a case of hanging and death by suicide”.
In its conclusive medico-legal opinion to the CBI, the six-member team dismissed the claims of “poisoning and strangling”, with forensic chief Dr Sudhir Gupta saying the panel did not find any trace of poison and drugs in the viscera.
PTI quoted AIIMS as saying, “A medical board was constituted by Dr Sudhir Gupta, Head of the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology AIIMS, New Delhi as per request received by him from CBI for providing expert opinion in the case relating to the death of Sushant Singh Rajput.”
“The medical board has submitted the report directly to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as required. Being a legal matter, any inputs on the report submitted by the medical board would have to be obtained from the CBI,” it said.
The statement followed media reports questioning the outcome of the medical board’s examination and Dr Gupta’s comments ruling out murder.
Rajput’s family lawyer Vikas Singh said on Sunday that he was highly perturbed by the AIIMS’ medico-legal opinion submitted to the CBI and would request the probe agency’s chief to constitute a fresh forensic team in the case.
He took to Twitter and said: “Highly perturbed with AIIMS report. Going to request CBI Director to constitute a fresh Forensic team . How could AIIMS team give a conclusive report in the absence of the body,that too on such shoddy post mortem done by Cooper hospital wherein time of death also not mentioned”.
This comes even as a paper authored by five researchers at Microsoft Research, India found that there was “an important role played by politicians, especially the BJP, in proposing a ’murder’ alternative to the ’suicide’ narrative”.
The researchers, Joyojeet Pal, Syeda Zainab Akbar, Ankur Sharma, Himani Negi and Anmol Panda, found that the “data strongly suggest that the BJP drove the insinuation of ‘murder’ since it was used more than ‘suicide’ in most weeks since July”.
In their study, they analysed Twitter influencers in the case, which involved looking at tweets from 2,000 journalists and media houses and 1,200 politicians in Bihar and Maharashtra between June 14 and September 12, 2020.
(with PTI inputs)