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By Venkatesh Raghavan*
New Delhi: Ruling against actress Rhea Chakraborty’s petition seeking transfer of investigations into actor Sushant Rajput suicide case to Mumbai police, the Supreme Court came out with its verdict favoring the Bihar’s government’s plea to institute a CBI probe into the case, on Wednesday.
Supreme Court justice Hrishikesh Roy upheld that the Bihar government had the jurisdiction to register a FIR in the complaint related to the actor’s suicide death, further endorsing that the call for a CBI investigation was valid.
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The court in its verdict sought that the Maharashtra police hand over the probe to CBI and further render whatever assistance is sought by the Central agency from it. The order transcript stated, “It is a court ordered CBI investigation. Maharashtra police must comply and assist.” Further, the court directed CBI to expand its scope of investigations to cover any future cases related to the death of the actor Sushant Rajput, come up.
Actress Rhea had asked for a stay on the Bihar Police’s investigations into Sushant’s father KK Singh’s allegation that she was instrumental in abetment to the actor’s suicide. The court dismissed Rhea’s plea that also sought the transfer of the case from Patna to Mumbai. The petitioners seeking court intervention were Maharashtra Police, Bihar Police, CBI, Rhea Chakraborty and Sushant’s father KK Singh.
While senior counsel for Bihar government had argued that the state had jurisdiction to investigate the actor’s suicide death based on the FIR lodged by KK Singh, the father, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, senior advocate for the government of Maharashtra denied the prevalence of jurisdiction of Bihar. Singhvi in a strong counter-response had stated, “The case is being sensationalized for political gains.”
Tushar Mehta, Solicitor General, expressed that there was no investigation pending in either state and the case could be transferred to CBI. After hearing all sides for over three hours, the Court ruled in favor of the investigations being handed over to the CBI.
*The writer is a senior journalist
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