Coming Bihar polls multiplying Rhea’s woes?

By Arvind Das

Sep 9, 2020

Patna: The arrest of Rhea Chakraborty in the Sushant Singh Rajput case has hotted up the debate on how the ruling alliance in Bihar and the Centre is allegedly exploiting the situation with an eye on the coming state Assembly elections.

Sushant Singh Rajput, a Bollywood actor from Bihar, died by suicide or, as some believe, was forced into killIng himself. The BJP, which lost power in Maharashtra because of a sudden alliance of the Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress, lost no time to put the Maharashtra Government in the dock.

Sushant’s family alleged that Rhea and her family were behind the death of the actor, and the ensuing trial by overenthusiastic TV channels and other media literally forced the BJP to swing into action. Its leaders in Bihar made outrageous statements and raised the political temperature and then started demanding a CBI probe, citing alleged ineptness of the Mumbai Police probing the case.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, an ally of the BJP, coolly allowed the Bihar Police to register a zero FIR in Patna. A zero FIR is legal but rarely done. A number of Bihari labourers die in Punjab and other parts of the country, but no zero FIRs are registered.

Bollywood has always been a firm favourite of India’s dime-a-dozen TV channels. Starved of any earthshaking news during the morbid times of Corona, these channels grabbed Rhea issue like a fat cat and started churning out all kinds of ludicrous stories.

The name of Aditya Thackeray, son of Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, also cropped up but like most TV stories, that story too went nowhere.

But let’s for a moment think of the plight of Rhea Chakraborty who is facing all kind of slanders even before the trial is to begin.

A bored media, which for reasons we all know can’t report in detail about the tanking economy and massive unemployment and the raging pandemic, found the Rhea angle very spicy and splashed it up.

How much time Rhea will have to spend in jail is anybody’s guess because all know the delay that was happening in the delivery of justice in our system. All those arrested in Bheema Koregaon case are still in jail with no substantial charges against them.

The silly news of drugs that plays on a loop on TV these days is also odd. If people are arrested on the basis of allegations, then half the glamour industry should be behind bars. And we all have heard so many bizarre stories of drugs being circulated in Bollywood parties. It is rather strange to discover that the NCB had to wait for Sushant to die to find out that drugs are easily available in Mumbai and Bollywood is a major consumer.

The BJP, which has put up former Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis as its poll commander in Bihar, realises that winning Bihar is of utmost importance in these dreadful times of coronavirus and an economy that is in free fall. Bihar has always played an important role in national politics and, at present, all eyes are on the outcome of the Assembly polls.

Nitish Kumar and his party, the JDU, has no choice but to stay within the saffron camp. Nitish, in his third term, has sadly nothing to showcase this time In education, health and economy.

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oing back to Rhea, it is dismaying to imagine the plight of a budding actress trying desperately to gain foothold in dog-eat-dog world of Bollywood.

Political pundits find BJP’s sudden love for Sushant surprising. The same BJP had, without batting an eyelid, banned Sushant’s film Kedarnath in Uttarakhand.

There have been other cases of suicides in the film industry like that of Khan’s but no so-called morally upright people made a noise. Simply because Jiah did not have the backing of any big person or did not serve any political purpose. Many well-established names had cropped up then and Sooraj Pancholi was arrested, but the entire grim episode soon faded away from public and media memory.

Media has once again shown its insensitive face and proved that it is only interested in dishing out grime. It is unfortunate that the whole thing is being scripted like a C-grade Bollywood movie.

Politics and Bollywood have had links for a long time, but never have these connections been so low and crass and sordid. For the denizens of Bollywood, Sushant’s death is a reminder to set right many ills that afflict the industry. And, in politics, it is also a wake-up call for incompetent politicians to do something tangible to face voters.

—-INDIA NEWS STREAM