As Rhea Chakraborty, the main suspect in the alleged suicide case of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, is facing a tough time with media; various Bollywood celebrities have come forward to condemn the way she is being tried by the media.
The actress asked for security from the Mumbai Police recently, complaining that media people are crowding at her residence building and even giving her family members a tough time.
Rajput’s ex-girlfriend Rhea has been called out by late actor Sushant's fans as a "manipulative" woman who "performed black magic" and "drove her boyfriend to suicide" in the media.
Meanwhile, the Press Council of India recently issued an advisory to the media to not "conduct its own parallel trial or foretell the decision to avoid pressure during investigation and trial".
The council has urged media organisations “to refrain from giving excessive publicity to the victim, witnesses, suspects and accused as it will amount to invasion of their privacy rights”.
Many Bollywood celebs such as TaapseePannu, RanvirShorey, Anjana Sukhani, Shruti Seth, Lakshmi Manchu, Swara Bhaskar, Ram Gopal Varma, and others took to Twitter to slam the trial, while requesting to not sensationalise news or report based on speculations.
Telugu actress Lakshmi Manchu took to Twitter and said since the matter is unjust; we should “restrain ourselves from being evil and cruel and lynching of person and her entire family without knowing the facts”.
Agreeing to Lakshmi, Bollywood actress TaapseePannu too responded and said “it takes to be a human to understand how wrong it is to overtake judiciary to convict someone who isn’t proven guilty”.
While some news channels have turned news debates into court rooms, actor Ranvir Shorey opined that what could’ve really helped in this case is Supreme Court putting an embargo on news channels from investigating the matter.
Slamming the media trial, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma posted a video on YouTube and said, “In any civilised society, even if the police call it a murder, responsible media will call it alleged murder because the allegation is yet to be proven. Here, the agency is calling it suicide and Arnab (Goswami) directly calls it murder.”
With the consumption of such news and media, Singer Soha Mohapatra said that “we become a part of this ritualistic media witch-hunt that wants Rhea’s blood”.
Thirty-four-year-old Rajput was found dead in his flat in Bandra, a suburb of Mumbai, Maharashtra. He was originally a resident of the state of Bihar. Mumbai Police had filed an unnatural death case, but the case was handed over to the CBI on the orders of the Supreme Court of India.