Rhea cleared, TV hysteria left unpunished

ON Sunday, a day after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed two separate closure reports on the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput — one, that it was a death by suicide, and two, a clean chit on the charge of abetment to his former partner and actor Rhea Chakraborty — a motley bunch of people gathered on the dug-up road outside the building the actor had resided in.

They put up banners, posters and candles on a pipe left by construction workers to seek justice for the actor. They called themselves 'SSRaians' and even brought along a cake to celebrate the birthday of one of their members.

Less than five years after Rajput was found hanging by his staff at his Bandra residence on June 14, 2020, the spectacle his life and death was reduced to, has not ceased.

Today, media focus has shifted to the plea by Satish Salian, the father of Rajput's manager Disha Salian. He has sought a CBI probe and the registration of a first information report (FIR) against Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray for her death. She had fallen from the 14th floor of her building on June 7-8, 2020. The Mumbai police had then said that it was an accidental death.

But in 2020, the carpet bombing coverage by highly competitive television media served as a distraction from administrative failures over the Covid-19 pandemic, and it was Chakraborty and her family who bore the brunt of a media trial.

The CBI closure reports, which will be placed before a magistrate's court next month, were received with more benign coverage for Chakraborty and her family, a far cry from the chasing and outpouring of vitriol in news broadcasts and social media posts in 2020, that was nothing short of diabolical.

Chakraborty, who spent 27 days in jail, was accused of abetting the death by suicide of the actor. She was also charged under the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) for being part of a network to supply drugs and for money-laundering of Rajput's money, allegedly to the tune of Rs 15 crore.

Along with Rhea, her brother Showik, Rajput's former cook Dipesh Sawant and former housekeeper Samuel Miranda were also arrested.

While the money-laundering charge fell through without any evidence of money in Rajput's account, the drug-running charge also came to naught. As Justice SV Kotwal of the Bombay High Court said while granting the actor conditional bail, "There are no other criminal antecedents against her. She is not part of the chain of drug dealers."

Nevertheless, Chakraborty was cast in the classic trope of a scheming gold-digger who exploited the feelings of a sensitive and likeable man. Television channels vied with one another to ratchet up the hate and performative hysteria, taking the absurdity to incredible lengths (case in point: The Republic anchor Arnab Goswami's "give me drugs" performance or then reporter and now BJP spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari's deranged circling with the mike, cameraman dutifully in tow).

Chakraborty was even accused of performing 'black magic'. Social media stalkers noted that the 'green' colour of a waist belt she wore striking a yoga pose in one Instagram photo was the same colour of the cloth that the actor had hanged himself with!

When Chakraborty finally spoke to some television channels to share her side of the story, she was criticised for conducting a PR exercise and for being a 'boss-lady' delivering 'a perfectly-scripted, glitch-free performance' (Rhea's Polished, Glitch-Free Prime Time Performance, Shobhaa De, NDTV, Aug 28, 2020) because she narrated the sequence of events before Rajput's death in a seemingly unemotional manner.

Now, some of Chakraborty's colleagues in the film industry, who have welcomed the CBI closure report, have sought an apology from the television channels that conducted a media trial.

But is an apology enough?

Sections of the news media have got away with levelling wild allegations and blatantly indulging in privacy violations and illegal practices like door-stepping. TRPs are hardly the only reason why television channels harbour hysterical, masculinist media anchors and field reporters who don camouflages and climb into bathtubs.

In the Rajput case, the media's diversionary role in engineering a nationwide, 24x7 soap opera in the midst of a pandemic cannot be understated.

But what of the law-enforcing agencies that aided this exercise? Can the Mumbai police, the Enforcement Directorate and the Narcotics Bureau be let off the hook?

At the end of the day, the investigations and arrests into Chakraborty's alleged drug-running and money-laundering had no substance, as in so many cases before these agencies.

Media trials, as successive court orders and pronouncements have warned, can seek to influence investigation and are liable to contempt. But the courts as well as self-regulatory mechanisms have failed to rein in sensationalist media. There needs to be a greater understanding of the role of law-enforcing agencies to feed the beast and control the narrative.

The media shapes public opinion, but over the last two decades, it has played an extremely dangerous role in reinforcing misogynistic and communal sentiments and inciting hatred. In this, the media is ably assisted by a veritable army of social media trolls. One feeds the other and established news media retains the illusion that it speaks for and echoes "public" sentiment in the public interest.

As an increasingly regressive media creates and feeds viewers of irrational and outraged sentiments, it will keep looking for its victims and scapegoats, its witches and its demons, its loyal followers and groupies.

Rhea Chakraborty has taken the chance to reclaim her identity and still remain in the public glare. In the absence of any accountability by the media, can ordinary citizens hope to do likewise?