In a new twist to the Pratyusha Banerjee suicide case, the city police on Tuesday booked her boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh for allegedly abetting her suicide.
Four days after the “Balika Vadhu” television serial fame Pratyusha (24) was found hanging from a ceiling fan at her seventh floor flat in Harmony residency building at Goregaon in north Mumbai, the Bangurnagar police registered a case against her boyfriend Rahul under sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
Rahul, who runs a production company, is currently in Shree Sai Hospital at Kandivali, where he was taken on Sunday after he complained of chest pain and low blood pressure while he was being questioned for the second consecutive day in connection with the actress’ alleged suicide. Rahul, who was initially admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital, was shifted to general ward of the hospital on Tuesday.
The postmortem, conducted on Pratyusha’s body, had earlier ruled out any foul play in the actress’ alleged suicide. The police had on Sunday attributed Pratyusha’s death to ligature marks over neck and asphyxia, caused because of hanging or strangulation.
Rahul, whom the investigators see as a logical suspect in the case, has come under the intense scanner of the police for his failed love relationship with Pratyusha.
Both of Pratyusha and Rahul hail from Jharkhand state. While Pratyusha was from Jamshedpur, Rahul is from Ranchi.
Pratyusha’s friends claim that she and Rahul had been going steady for the past one and a half years and were planning to get married on April 14.
At a press conference held on Monday, Pratyusha’s close friends Kamya Punjabi, Vikas Gupta and Adah Khan had claimed that her relations with Rahul had soured.
Gupta – who is television producer – had said: “She was doing very well professionally. She had no shortage of work she had earned a lot of money and her money was taken care of by Rahul. She was not in depression at all. The only problem was she was in a disturbed relationship”
Pratyusha’s friends said that Rahul was allegedly cheating on her and had “physically assaulted” the 24-year-old actress in “public”.
On his part, Rahul has claimed that he was “innocent” and he wanted to marry Pratyusha.
Meanwhile, the investigators are currently recording the statements of 10 colleagues of Pratyusha, whose names lawyer Falguni Brahmbhatt has disclosed to the Bangurnagar police. Pratyusha’s another close friend leena has gone to town saying that her friend was disturbed by Singh’s ex-girlfriend, Saloni Sharma, who allegedly “assaulted” Balika Vadhu” actress.
leena, who was present at the press conference, had claimed that Singh’s former girlfriend “used to torture her (Pratyusha)”.
“A day before she allegedly committed suicide, Pratyusha had called me at 3 am, and she was crying very badly. She told me ‘I can’t live my life like this, and I want to come out of it’. She said she wants to fight back and wanted to come out of it. She just wanted to get married to Rahul and have a child, this was her plan,” leena said.
Meanwhile, veteran actress Hema Malini came in for severe flak in social media for being “insensitive” in her tweets. For, she called Pratyusha’s alleged suicide “senseless” and said that world admired a fighter not a “loser”, who takes away his or her life.
“All these senseless suicides which achieve nothing! life is God’s gift for us to live not for us to take at will. We have no right to do that. One must learn to overcome all odds & emerge successful, not succumb under pressure & give up easily. The world admires a fighter not a loser,” she tweeted.
In his criticism of the media for exploiting Pratyusha’s suicide, the veteran actress stated: “Just becomes food for the hungry media who chew on news like celebrity suicides until the next sensational news happens. Then it is forgotten”.