Last week, a clean chit arrived for the young actor, five years after a poisonous witch-hunt shredded her life on live television. Led by a group of news anchors, who found common cause with an army of anonymous X warriors that mushroomed overnight, Chakraborty’s life turned into a free-for-all Bacchanalia — and we shot it straight into our veins. Now, more than a thousand days after losing her partner, actor Sushant Singh Rajput, the CBI has found no evidence of abetment to suicide, no financial misappropriation, no emotional manipulation or kala jadoo. Nothing.
So, what do we owe Rhea Chakraborty?
This is not a rhetorical question. Chakraborty’s litany of losses started piling up in the days after her boyfriend tragically died by suicide on 14 June 2020. Rajput was held up as an iconoclast, a self-made star with no connections in Bollywood. But that compassion and understanding was not offered to Chakraborty, also an “outsider” to the industry. In the blast radius of India’s collective bloodlust, we ensured her life was arrested in motion, her career came to a grinding halt, and her family and friends were harassed. Heck, we even stole her grief from her.
I have a flashbulb memory of that era, watching the depths TV media was beginning to plumb, with my jaw on the floor. In hindsight, we were witnessing an inflection point like no other in India’s culture, a socio-political vortex that would eddy out in different directions, while swallowing Chakraborty whole.
All through July and August of 2020, as India was mid-pandemic, channels broadcast photos of Rajput’s body, dissected his medical prescriptions and the state of his mind, deployed voodoo dolls and skull graphics to peddle theories about “black magic”. Reporters shrieked like banshees outside police stations, courts, Chakraborty’s home, anywhere she might appear.
One of the worst offenders was Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami, who apparated on our screens with a new refrain every day, from “Mujhe drugs do, drugs do” to “Mujhse saha nahi ja raha hai”. Goswami spewed venom on the daily in front of panellists, most of whom had nothing to do with the case, like actor Mukesh Khanna who was last relevant in the 1990s. But they were all in agreement that Bollywood was a labyrinthine den of vice. Together, they rejoiced in the imminent downfall of a nepotistic industry that, they alleged, had—in cahoots with Chakraborty—driven Rajput to suicide.
Over at Times Now, we were subjected to deep analysis, like the meaning of the words “imma bounce”. In one particularly frenzied episode, Navika Kumar walked into the studio carrying a tote bag full of evidence and “important files”, and spirited the anchor to “glean” from them. Kumar would go on to further the most regressive stereotypes and assert “women can be possessive… It’s seen in Indian families, the wife or girlfriend doesn’t really like too much of the man’s relationship with his own family.”
I could pick out the most egregious example of reportage from that time, and still barely touch the surface of the derangement we saw. Everyone from the police to the Press Council of India haplessly criticised the coverage; the Bombay High Court specifically called out Republic TV and Times Now for their role in sensationalising Rajput’s death and the adverse impact it would have on the investigation.
Journalist Nidhi Razdan said in an interview that she had “never seen a race to the bottom this bad.” But it was only thanks to the audience—the rest of us—that consumed this public execution like pornography.
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Vicious backlash
Something broke with the SSR coverage. India’s #MeToo movement had unfolded a year and a half prior, as an impulse—however, inadequate—to hold powerful men to account. By 2020, it had already been reduced to a punchline. Power had flowed back to where it had always rested, and the backlash was vicious. Women were being punished for demanding too much, and for having demanded it too loudly.
A few months down the line, India was barely recovering from the Delhi riots, the CAA-NRC protests, and the contentious farm laws being bulldozed through the Parliament, when the pandemic struck, rendering almost everyone terrified and powerless. Covid-19 stripped us of control over our health, our livelihoods, and our movement. Migrant workers were dying on highways, the economy was in free fall.
We needed somewhere to direct this impotent fury, and Chakraborty was served up on a platter: Young, female, and on the brink of success. An independent woman who lived with a man on her own terms—a kind of autonomy that was intolerable. A prime candidate for the stake, while the rest of India waited, torches lit.
While Chakraborty was being eviscerated on TV, the spiralling hysteria was proving to be very profitable and very political. Within a week of Rajput’s death, mentions of suicide dropped precipitously, and were replaced by the term “murder”. A University of Michigan study analysed 7,000 YouTube videos and 1,00,000 tweets from the period and found clear patterns. BJP politicians systematically pushed the murder narrative. Around mid-July 2020, they began demanding a CBI enquiry, deliberately undermining the Mumbai police investigation—which was being conducted by a government then led by their former ally, the Shiv Sena, and the NCP and Congress.
The Bihar Chief Minister personally intervened to get an FIR filed in Patna, the actor’s home city, unleashing a jurisdictional circus. I’m sure the fact that the state was heading to elections was entirely coincidental. Posters and stickers asserting “Na bhoole hain, na bhoolenge”, appeared across Bihar, weaponising a young man’s death as an election rallying cry. Rajput—whose films such as Kedarnath had been attacked by the same ecosystem—proved to be very politically expedient in death.
Political careers were launched on the back of Rajput’s death and Chakraborty’s hounding. The shrillest voice on the lot, Kangana Ranaut, who spent months calling Chakraborty a murderer and attacking Bollywood, is now a BJP MP. Journalist Pradeep Bhandari, who amplified conspiracy theories, is now a BJP spokesperson. Bihar’s former DGP Gupteshwar Pandey, who addressed press conferences about the case with theatrical flair, joined the Janata Dal United shortly after.
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Back to business?
But we must all take credit for this ghoulish tamasha. We were the TRPs, the eyeballs, the engagement metrics that made this entire enterprise so valuable. Just a bunch of useful idiots whose viewership kept this bonfire burning. For a few months, we even unleashed screeds aimed at Bollywood. Now all is forgiven and forgotten, and we are back to defending supposedly drug-addled “nepo babies”, joyfully contributing toward their Rs 600-crore box office collections.
It’s back to business as usual for everyone except Chakraborty, whose career and life remain in suspension. To her credit, she’s refused to crumble. In an interview from earlier this year, she speaks of a mindset shift that happened when she was in jail, of tapping into her inner power, and refusing to play the victim. She’s launched a podcast and a clothing line with her brother, both of which are called Chapter 2, and cheekily talks about almost naming it “Chudail Ka Badla”.
But beneath the resilience is the sorrow. Chakraborty admits that she was never a massive success in films, and that door has—possibly forever—shut for her. Her brother, she says, who had a 98th percentile and was set to join an IIM, was arrested though he had no part to play in the case. The clothing line was launched to pay for their legal bills.
Chakraborty’s steadfastness is real, but so is the wreckage. She might have made peace with it, but her life was stolen from her. What other choice does she have?
So what do we owe Rhea Chakraborty? The channels owe her airtime and apologies, and they deserve more than a light rap on the wrist. The politicians who built their careers on her persecution owe accountability.
But the harder debt is ours. Chakraborty is still here, still standing. But we’ve already scrolled past to the next spectacle, as we always do.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)