Police said an accidental death report was filed at Bandra police station and the provisional cause of death is asphyxia due to hanging. They said they had not found any indications of foul play. However, home minister Anil Deshmukh said they would also probe if professional rivalry drove Sushant to suicide.Deshmukh tweeted: “While the post mortem report says actor @itsSSR committed suicide by hanging himself, there are media reports that he allegedly suffered from clinical depression because of professional rivalry. @MumbaiPolice will probe this angle too.”
The 34-year-old actor was found dead in his duplex flat at Mount Blanc building in Bandra on Sunday.
Police have recorded statements of six people so far, including one of his sisters who lives in Goregaon, his actor friend Mahesh Shetty, Chakraborty, his managers and cook.
It was Rajput’s cook who called the police control room after he and two of Rajput’s managers found him dead on breaking the locked door to his room with the help of a locksmith.
DCP (Zone IX) Abhishek Trimukhe said Bandra police have got the provisional post-mortem report. “A team of three doctors (at R N Cooper Hospital) conducted Rajput’s autopsy and the provisional cause of death is asphyxia due to hanging,” said Trimukhe. No suicide note was found.
A Bandra police officer told TOI they do not suspect the actor had any financial problem. “Rajput’s sister said she frequently visited his flat and stayed over. She had gone to her Goregaon home only a few days ago. She too said he had no financial problems but he was undergoing treatment for depression for the past six months. His friend Shetty said the actor had called him early on Sunday but he did not pick up. He said if he had, the situation might have been different,” said the officer.“It’s a clear case of suicide by hanging. There were no other injuries on his body,” said one of the doctors who conducted his post-mortem. The post-mortem was carried out by Dr Sachin Sonawane, Dr Shivkumar Kolle and Dr Sandeep Ingale. The doctors wore PPEs and carried out the autopsy as is the norm.
A separate four-member team of experts from Kalina Forensic Science Laboratory visited Singh’s Bandra house on Monday afternoon. “The team looked at the crime scene and gathered evidence to conclude whether it was a homicidal or suicidal hanging. It’s a part of the standard protocol,” said an officer from the laboratory. Forensic experts rely on images of ligature marks on the neck to draw conclusions. “They will also examine the cloth used for the act through a tensile testing machine to evaluate its strength. This too is done routinely,” the expert added.
Rajput’s phone has been sent to the forensic laboratory to extract his call details and other information to find out what could have led to his death.
Cooper doctors have sent his viscera to JJ Hospital in Byculla for histopathology while another set of samples have been sent to the Kalina laboratory, where routine chemical analysis will be carried out to check for intoxication, poisoning, among other tests. An officer from Kalina laboratory said the reports are expected in a week’s time.
Rajput loved computer gaming and was learning how to code as a quarantine activity during the lockdown. On April 27, he posted on social media that he loved computer gaming and always wanted to learn the language behind it.
“So for the last weeks, I have been trying to learn coding and it has been an extremely exciting process to say the least and yet I’m just scratching the surface,” he posted.
Police are inquiring into how pictures of Rajput’s body got leaked and were widely circulated on social media on Sunday.
The Maharashtra Cyber cell tweeted: “A disturbing trend has been observed on Social Media platforms by Maharashtra Cyber that pictures of deceased actor Shri Sushant Singh Rajput are being circulated, which are disturbing and in bad taste. It is emphasised that circulation of such pictures is against legal guidelines and court directions, and are liable to invite legal action. Maharashtra Cyber exhorts and directs all citizens to refrain from circulating the aforesaid pictures. The pictures already circulated should be deleted henceforth.”
