Sushant Singh Rajput was a dynamic young actor who managed to garner a huge fan following with his work in TV (Pavitra Rishta) and films such as Kai Po Che, MS Dhoni, Sonchiriya, Chichorre. On 14 June last year, news of the actor’s sudden death came as a shock to all of us.
I remember calling up actor Eijaz Khan, who was recently seen in Bigg Boss. He said that we must be very sensitive with the coverage of anything related to Sushant Singh Rajput because of how big a star he was and the influence he has on the youth of the country. Messages and long posts with ‘Rest In Peace’ flooded the internet, but what followed was nothing but madness and a new low.
Peace was nowhere to be found. Multiple conspiracy theories, the actor’s family alleging it was not suicide but murder, rigorous investigation that lost the plot like a bad Bollywood film and the tarnishing of Sushant and his near ones' reputation has left a bad taste behind.
Not a single day goes by when we don’t see some trend related to SSR on Google or Twitter. His fans (and in some cases political parties) have used the episode to cross boundaries and vilify the film industry. Nepotism hasn’t been THIS big a debate in any other industry as it’s in Bollywood.
I sincerely hope that Sushant Singh Rajput's soul found peace because here his memory comes in the form of all the bats**t crazy things that followed his unfortunate death.
Many are convinced that Sushant Singh Rajput was murdered. Many others believe he’s still alive somewhere and will make an entry on 14 June this year. Well, we wish life was a soap opera, but it isn’t. Here are some of the bizarre conspiracy theories that surrounded Sushant Singh Rajput’s death.
Conspiracy Theory 1: Sushant’s Death was Live Streamed on the Dark Web
The text on a Facebook page read, “Guess who is the last visible person in Sushant’s eye…Optography: read the science”. Now what’s that, you’ll ask? Took me a while too. Going by what Google tells me - Optography is the process of viewing or retrieving an optogram, an image on the retina of the eye. A belief that the eye "recorded" the last image seen before death was widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In my head, I am like, LMAO. Please. But imagine the state of thousands who were hooked on finding out what happened to the actor. The post read, “Sushant Singh Rajput was beaten brutally with a bat and his right ankle was broken…these b*st*rd killers were mocking him and saying…cricket khelna hai tujhe…khelna hai tujhe..abhi khel. Dhoni banega. Second they used stun gun on side of his neck to paralyse him partially and third with Sushant’s dog Fudge’s collar belt they strangulated him…all this happened.”
The Economic Times, in a piece, has quoted the post that has been removed by Facebook now. This same theory also found a way on a YouTube Channel called “Ulti Khopdi”, which got close to three lakh views at the time. Many other YouTube channels picked the same for clicks and views.
A tweet by Vibhor Anand (who was later arrested for peddling lies about Disha Salian's death) claimed that the “murder” of Disha Salian and SSR were streamed on dark web across the world. Anand claimed that he was beaten up before death and “all these Bollywood actors enjoyed the live killing of Sushant.”
A search on CrowdTangle with the keyword ‘Sushant’ leads to over 500 million interactions since 15 June. What’s worse is that many TV news channels aired all these baseless conspiracy theories and fanned the sentiment that Sushant Singh Rajput was perhaps killed and did not allegedly die by suicide.
Conspiracy Theory 2: FAU-G (the game) Was Sushant Singh Rajput’s Idea
In a post on 27 April 2020, Sushant Singh Rajput wrote about learning the basics of coding. The post was captioned, ''I love computer gaming and always wanted to learn the language behind it. So last few weeks I’ve 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.:) !! #coding #computerprogramming #gaming #animation #love”.
This gave rise to the conspiracy that FAU-G, developed by GOQII founder Vishal Gondal and promoted by Akshay Kumar, was in fact Sushant Singh Rajput’s idea. BOOMLive fact-checked the claim and discredited it but this was enough fodder for the misinformation to go viral. How could Vibhor Anand not jump onto the wagon and create more confusion? Anand, in a Twitter thread, went on to draw connections between the death of Qyuki founder Samir Bangara and Gondal, who were former colleagues.
Conspiracy Theory 3: SSR Wanted to Expose a Ring Operated to Harvest Adrenochrome
One of Vibhor Anand’s tweets said that “between 24 March to 14 June 2020, 26000+ kids went missing from Maharashtra. Raped, murdered or still being tortured to harvest Adrenochrome?” This gave rise to the conspiracy that some actors in Bollywood are consuming “Adrenochrome” to stay young. Similar conspiracy theories have been floating around about Hollywood too, and this was seen as a replication of the same in India.
Conspiracy Theory 4: SSR Is Alive
There are multiple Quora and Reddit threads and blogs on people making “logical points” for why they believe Sushant Singh Rajput is still alive. There are also Twitter exchanges by fan accounts who are of the opinion that the actor will "return" on 14 June, 2021 one year after his demise. One of the “logical” reasons made is that they have never seen the pictures of any celebrity’s dead body and then they asked about the “hanging pictures”. “If SSR committed suicide, why are there no hanging pictures? This proves that the pictures were morphed,” a blog claimed.
Multiple YouTube videos claim and explain the same.
While many posts on Facebook were removed and Vibhor Anand’s Twitter account was suspended, there are still many other Facebook pages that continue to talk about Sushant Singh Rajput and go on with the smear campaign against people from Bollywood and politics. One group even went on to post a picture of Sushant's partner Rhea Chakraborty with folded hands (from a video that she posted) and a noose around her neck with options YES or NO, suggesting a death penalty for Rhea.
Even today, if you search for “Sushant Singh Rajput” there are all sorts of questions that his fans seek answers for. As I said, it's incredulous enough that some even believe that the actor will come back on 14 June, a year after the news of his death left us heartbroken.
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