Sushant Singh Rajput second death anniversary: ​​A timeline of the case

May 2020

Rajput passed away on June 14, 2020. Early investigations by the Mumbai Police concluded that he had died by suicide. A preliminary post-mortem at Cooper Hospital confirmed the cause of death as asphyxia due to hanging.

In the initial round of investigation, many of Sushant Singh Rajput’s friends and colleagues were questioned by the police. These included Aditya Chopra, Mukesh Chhabra, Rhea Chakraborty, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Rajeev Masand, Mahesh Bhatt among many others.

The police recorded the statement of the actor’s father and two sisters before they flew to Delhi. Mumbai Police said, “The family informed us that they do not know why Sushant was depressed and also did not mention if they had any suspicion on anyone.”

August 2020

The actor’s father, KK Singh, had lodged a complaint with the Patna police on July 25, 2020, naming Rhea Chakraborty, her family members and domestic helps working at Rajput’s residence. In the FIR, he had also accused Rhea of ​​siphoning off crores from the actor’s bank account. None of these charges have been proven yet.

Besides Chakraborty, the others named in the FIR are three of her relatives — Indrajit Chakraborty, Sandhya Chakraborty and Shobhik Chakraborty, and two others – Samuel Miranda and Shruti Modi.

The FIR was filed under IPC Sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating).

A day after the FIR was registered, a four-member team of Bihar Police left for Mumbai on July 29. The same day, Chakraborty moved the Supreme Court, seeking to transfer the Patna FIR to Mumbai, claiming Bihar did not have jurisdiction in the matter. Sushant’s family and the Maharashtra government filed caveats in the top court on Chakraborty’s petition.

On July 31, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) based on the FIR lodged KK Singh in Patna, accusing Rhea and her family members of cheating and siphoning funds of about Rs 15 crore from Sushant’s bank accounts.

October 2020

On August 7, the ED questioned Rhea for about eight hours pertaining to the investment made by her and her family in the two companies floated by Rajput. The agency also quizzed her about her brother about her Showik.

However, a week later, the ED contended that it had not found any “substantial direct transfers” from the late actor’s account to Chakraborty or her family members, sources familiar with the case told The Indian Express.

The Supreme Court on August 19, 2020, directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the Sushant Singh Rajput’s death case and asked Maharashtra to assist with the probe. The Mumbai Police then handed over all the evidence collected in the case to the investigating agency.

CBI questioned Rhea and her family members for hours. The NCB was alerted after chats linking Rhea and her brother de ella to a drug supplier were discovered. This also launched NCB’s investigation into Bollywood’s alleged ‘drug network’.

The CBI also recorded the statements of doctors at the Cooper hospital who carried out the postmortem of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The police sent the postmortem report of Cooper hospital to Delhi-based AIIMS for consultation. The CBI team looked into the time when the body was brought to the hospital for postmortem, among other things.

The statements of the staff who catered to the actor will be recorded by the CBI.

October 2020

On September 4, Rhea’s brothers Showik and Samuel Miranda were arrested by the NCB for allegedly procuring non-commercial quantity of marijuana/ ganja from an alleged drug supplier at least 10-12 times. They were sent to judicial custody till September 9. Rajput’s former cook Dipesh Sawant was arrested by NCB in the case the very next day.

The Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) arrested actor Rhea Chakraborty on September 8 on charges of procuring drugs along with Sushant Singh Rajput and paying for the same. Based on statements by Chakraborty’s brother Showik, and Rajput’s cook and housekeeper, who were arrested earlier, the NCB said drugs were procured on the directions of both her and Rajput, and that both paid for them, thus establishing that “she (Chakraborty) was an active member of (a) drug syndicate connected with drug supplies”. No narcotics have been recovered from either Chakraborty or Showik.

Later in the month, Chakraborty said in her bail plea filed in the Bombay High Court that she was innocent and NCB was “deliberately” trying to invoke stringent charges against her and her family. She also said that she had been subjected to a “witch-hunt”. In her bail application filed in the HC on Tuesday, Chakraborty said she was just 28 years of age, and besides the probe by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), she had been subjected to three more investigations by police and central agencies, and a Simultaneous media trial.

The NCB summoned top actors Deepika Padukone, Sara Ali Khan, Shraddha Kapoor, and Rakul Preet Singh to record their statements in connection with the agency’s probe against the “drug syndicate” that supplied “narcotics to Bollywood” on September 23. While Padukone had been summoned on September 25, Shraddha Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan have been summoned on September 26 by NCB.

October 2020

On October 3, 2020, the AIIMS’ medical board ruled out murder in the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, terming it “a case of hanging and death by suicide”, the premier institute’s forensic chief Dr Sudhir Gupta had said. In its conclusive medico-legal opinion to the CBI, the six-member team of forensic doctors had dismissed the claims of “poisoning and strangling” that had been made in the case of Singh’s death. “It is a case of hanging and death by suicide. We have submitted our conclusive report to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI),” Dr Gupta had said.

The same month, rejecting all arguments of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) point by point, including the key allegations that she was part of a “drug syndicate” and was “harbouring” actor Sushant Singh Rajput, the Bombay High Court granted bail to actor Rhea Chakraborty “with stringent conditions” on October 7, nearly a month after she was arrested in a drug case arising from Rajput’s suicide.

Chakraborty’s brother was granted bail some time after her.

November 2020

In December, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh questioned the status of the case in a press conference and said, “It has been more than five months since the investigation began but the CBI has not revealed if Sushant Singh Rajput was murdered or died by suicide. I request CBI to reveal the findings of the investigation at the earliest.”

March 2021

In January 2021, the Bombay High Court stated that two TV channels, Republic and Times Now, “took upon themselves the role of the investigator, the prosecutor as well as the Judge and delivered the verdict as if, during the pandemic, except they, all organs of the State were in slumber”.

May 2021

Sushant’s roommate who also discovered his body, Siddharth Pithani was arrested in May by the NCB. The NCB had claimed that marijuana was procured for Rajput on his instructions from him by his two staffers as well as Pithani. The NCB had also submitted photographs from his laptop claiming that it was ‘incriminating evidence’.

August 2021

The Maharashtra Congress had questioned the Central Bureau of Investigation’s “silence” over the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, a year after it took over the probe into the case. The party had alleged that the national investigation agencies were being used by the Center for its own “political agenda”.

October 2021

NCB had arrested one of the partners of a popular Bandra eatery, which is known to be frequented by Bollywood celebrities. The accused, Kunal Jani, was believed to be a friend of Rajputs. The NCB had also arrested celebrity manager Karishma Prakash after it claimed that he had recovered 1.7 gm of charas and two bottles of CBD oil from her residence in Andheri.

October 2021

A special court in an order allowed Rhea Chakraborty’s application seeking de-freezing of her bank accounts frozen during the investigation of the drugs case filed against her by the NCB in 2020. The court also allowed a plea for the return of her laptop and phone seized during the test in the case. The court said that with no strong opposition from the NCB on her plea seeking the de-freezing of her accounts and Fixed Deposits, it can be allowed subject to conditions including a written undertaking from her that she will make available the balance amount shown in the accounts as and when required during the trial. Her plea de ella had said that she supported herself and her brother de ella with the money from her accounts which were frozen last year.

February 2022

A special court ordered the de-freezing of accounts of two accused in the drugs case filed following the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, observing that they were seized illegally by the NCB. Two accused, Jai Madhok and Zaid Vilatra, filed separate applications before the special court stating that their bank accounts were seized by the NCB. Madhok’s plea said that he has accounts in two banks, which informed him in October last year that they were stopping transactions.

June 2022

A special court in Mumbai granted a plea filed by actor Rhea Chakraborty to travel abroad for the IIFA awards to be held in Abu Dhabi. Chakraborty had bail conditions including that she cannot travel abroad without the court’s permission.

As of today:

The case is yet to begin trial and is still under investigation.

Siddharth Pithani hasn’t been granted bail yet. “We requested bail in January but the hearing has yet to take place in court,” his lawyer Taraq Sayyed had told ETimes last month. He was, however, granted permission to attend his wedding in 2021, and surrendered himself a fortnight later.