Pavitra Rishta director Kushal Zaveri is speaking on the recent death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Pavitra Rishta was the daily soap, which turned Sushant into a household face, before he ventured into movies.
Kushal has now claimed that the ‘me too’ allegations faced by Sushant, back in 2018, mentally tormented the actor – leading him to spend sleepless nights, until his name was cleared from the same.
Sushant was embroiled into a controversy, when he was accused of misbehaving with his ‘Dil Bechara’ co-star Sanjana Sanghi, back when the ‘me too’ campaign was at it’s peak in India.
The accusations were cleared by Sanjana later on, as she dismissed all such claims – but it happened after the actor had already suffered a few days under media and internet scrutiny.
Taking to Instagram, the Pavitra Rishta director wrote on the subject:
“I stayed with sushant from July 2018 to Feb 2019 … the most vulnerable I have seen him was during the #metoo movement in Oct 2018 … the electronic media was targeting him without any solid proof … We tried our best to contact sanjana sanghi but it seems she was in USA and was not available for any comment (strange coincidence).”
He further added:
“Sushant knew back of his mind who was targetting him but didn’t have proof to call them out … I remember how sushant couldn’t sleep for 4 nights waiting for sanjana to clear the allegations … Finally she cleared his name on the 5th day and it all seemed like a hard earned victory as if the battle was over. I am putting this here out not only for closure sake but to also find out if the people sushant thought were targetting him Were actually behind this.”
Going back to the time the allegations were made, Sushant had released a statement from his side before Sanjana came forward to put everything to rest. The actor had shared screenshots of their conversations on Whatsapp, wondering if there was an agenda behind running such smear campaign against him. Here’s what he said, then:
“I feel sad to reveal personal information but it seems that there is no other way to state what actually happened, in the midst of this curated, well-timed and agenda-driven smear campaign. From the first day of the shoot till the last day, this is what happened on the sets with Sanjana. Misconduct? Not at all. Agenda? You decide.”
For now, Sushant’s case has been given a nod to be probed by CBI, after Bihar government’s request for CBI-involvement was approved by Supreme Court, following centre’s intervention.
The actor died on 14th June in Mumbai at the age of 34.