Public Memory is short and television memory even shorter, not more than a 24-hour news cycle. On June 14, few of India’s 403 news television channels remembered that it was the first death anniversary of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput. This promising young movie star’s death, initially reported as suicide, transformed into a CBI murder investigation following relentless media coverage. All of June-July last year, daily prime time news coverage on the idiot box was dominated by his alleged murder, with hysterical news anchors pinning the blame on the late actor’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty. A year later, Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief of the Republic TV news channel who conducted a detailed media trial against Chakraborty and Bollywood, was conspicuously absent from his prosecutorial chair on Rajput’s first death anniversary.
Now, all this hullabaloo has come to naught. Chakraborty is out on bail even as the CBI investigation has reached a dead end with the bureau having failed to find any evidence to establish Rajput’s death as a homicide. However, since last year’s media trial Chakraborty’s movie career and reputation are in tatters.
Nevertheless, there is some schadenfreude for Chakraborty and Bollywood. Times Now, one of the TV channels at the forefront of the Rajput trial by media, has had to eat humble pie. After film industry associations and 34 producers sued the channel for “irresponsible reporting”, this channel issued a statement on June 22 that it will not air any collectively defamatory material on Bollywood. And Goswami, recently chargesheeted by the Mumbai Police for rigging television viewership surveys in favour of Republic TV, has returned to anchor its prime time 9 o’ clock broadcast after a long absence. But drawn and almost polite, he is evidently a chastened individual. And his claims that Republic TV is the country’s #1 English language news channel have a hollow ring. Perhaps there is divine justice, after all.