CBI takes over Sushant Singh Rajput's death case, re-registers Bihar Police FIR

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday officially took over the probe into the FIR registered by Bihar Police in connection with the alleged suicide of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, officials here said.

While the central probe agency has merely re-registered the case as filed by officials of Bihar Police, the CBI said it has assigned it to the Special Investigative Team that is currently probing the Agusta-Westland Chopper scam and the Vijay Mallya-Kingfisher bank fraud case. This SIT was earlier headed by senior IPS officer Rakesh Asthana.

The case will be probed by a special investigation team under Superintendent of Police Nupur Prasad and will be supervised by DIG Gagandeep Gambhir and Joint Director Manoj Shashidhar, both senior IPS officers from the Gujarat cadre, officials added.

After the actor's death in June this year, the Mumbai Police had registered a case and conducted a probe into allegations of abetment to suicide, following which at least 40 witnesses were summoned and questioned, as per reports. The state police in Maharashtra had concluded that there was no foul play in the case.

However, as rumours about the same continued around Rajput's death, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court for a CBI probe in the case, following which the Bihar Police said it had registered a case against Rhea Chakraborty and her family under sections of abetment to suicide, wrongful confinement, cheating, theft and other offences purportedly on the basis of a complaint filed by the 34-year-old actor's father.

But as the Bihar Police began its probe and sent a team to Mumbai for the investigation, a bitter turf war broke out between police of both states over jurisdiction, owing to which the Bihar government had decided to hand over the probe to the CBI of its own accord.

Significantly, this does not solve the jurisdiction problem of the investigation. While the Bihar Governor issued a notification extending the CBI's jurisdiction in the case to the "whole state of Bihar and other places related to the investigation", it is not permitted to extend jurisdiction to places where it does not have authority.

As a result, the subsequent notification issued to the CBI by the Department of Personnel and Training, based on which the agency has registered the case clearly restricts jurisdiction to the state of Bihar — meaning that the CBI would still need Maharashtra government's consent to enter Mumbai for their investigation.