The death of Sushant Singh Rajput has opened a can of worms with A-listers of the Bollywood that includes the likes of Salman Khan, Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra, and others being accused of pushing the Patna born-lad to the fringes of the Bollywood industry, which ultimately led him to commit suicide. The godfather-esque culture in Bollywood is thriving and pretty well intact, courtesy these stars.
The 34-year old actor’s suicide has led to demands for a probe from several quarters. His family in Patna, Bihar is devastated and is demanding a CBI investigation into the matter. A case has been filed against Salman Khan, Karan Johar, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and Ekta Kapoor under Sections 306, 109, 504 & 506 of IPC in connection with the actor’s death in a court in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur.
While all the aforementioned names have invited some degree of spotlight, none is inviting it more than Salman Khan—the inimitable self-proclaimed Godfather of the industry. The 54 year old Salman Khan has yet again come under the scanner for using his power and foothold in the industry to push another Bollywood star in the corner.
From Vivek Oberoi to Arijit Singh to Sonu Nigam and now Sushant Singh Rajput, the bad boy of industry who masquerades as a good-Samaritan behind the elaborate PR frenzy of ‘Being Human’ is the mafia of Bollywood. Salman Khan in his stupor of power has made the lives of people hell who dared cross him.
Salman Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Vivek Oberoi
Salman and Aishwarya’s affair started during their film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) and ended on a rather sorry note in 2002 when media reports came in that stated that Salman had physically assaulted the star. Eyewitnesses say that Salman even reached Aishwarya’s apartment and kept banging on the door, asking to be let in. Some say that he even threatened to commit suicide if she didn’t let him in.
Salman later said in an interview that she wasn’t returning his love and that he was forced to turn violent.
“If you won’t fight, that means there is no love between you, I will not fight with an outsider; when we fight, it is all because of our love,” Salman sounded deranged while making such statements.
When Aishwarya started dating Vivek Oberoi, Salman even threatened Oberoi with dire consequences, so much so that Oberoi was forced to conduct a press conference.
And that’s when Vivek’s promising career came at an abrupt halt. After his infamous press conference, the Bollywood instead of going with him sided with the Salman Khan clan. As a result, he was quietly pushed around and no movies came his way because the ‘Bhai’ of Bollywood had issued a ‘fatwa’ against Oberoi.
Vivek on several occasions tried asking for forgiveness but Salman Khan did not budge.
Jiah Khan
The fact that Salman Khan is the Godfather of Sooraj Pancholi is known to all. Khan invested a lot of money on Pancholi and his debut movie ‘Hero’. Interestingly, Sooraj Pancholi is another product of nepotism as his father is actor Aditya Pancholi and a close aide of Salman.
According to a report on Filmfare, an insider informed that Sushant got firing from Salman himself. This took place because Sushant misbehaved with Salman’s mentee Sooraj at a party. The ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ actor also asked Sushant to stay away from Sooraj.
And that’s how Sushant came on the radar of Salman Khan. It is being reported that many of Sushant’s films were taken away because Salman had ordered the Bollywood producers to do so.
Sooraj Pancholi has been in the police’s net before as his girlfriend Jiah Khan had committed suicide and called out Sooraj in her letters as the reason for her taking this extreme step. But with Salman’s hand on Pancholi, even after seven years since the suicide, he has been walking around scot-free.
Rabia Khan, Jiah Khan’s mother had accused Salman Khan of interfering with the case on her daughter’s suicide, back in 2015. Now, after Sushant’s untimely death, Rabia Khan has come out with a video where she has again accused Salman Khan of interfering in Jiah’s suicide investigation.
She alleged that the actor had called the CBI officer and stated not to harass Sooraj Pancholi because a lot of money was invested behind the movie ‘Hero’
In the same video, she is heard stating that ‘bullying is also kind of killing somebody’.
Jiah khan's mother talking about Nepotism #SalimKhan pic.twitter.com/OwIgvgsPJW
— Panakj Singh (@Pankaj241095) June 17, 2020
Sonu Nigam
Sonu Nigam recently came up with statements in the aftermath of Sushant’s death that nepotism exists and very well breeds in the music industry too.
Taking a dig at Salman Khan, Sonu Nigam remarked that one of those responsible for the repeated replacement of singers was the man at whom “fingers are also being pointed at right now.” To quote the singer, he can be heard saying, “An actor, the one at whom everybody is pointing fingers these days, has done this with me, saying I should not be made to sing, the same actor has done this with Arijit Singh also. What is this? How can you use your power like that?”
Arijit Singh
Arijit Singh had pierced the childish ego of Salman Khan with an absent-minded statement which later led to the fallout between the two. Salman, true to his nature, started bullying Arijit and no sooner his songs were edited out from the movies.
Salman’s dislike for him started to show when Meet Brothers dropped a song recorded with Arijit from Kick. Even Pritam bailed out from using his vocal prowess for Bajrangi Bhaijaan. He apologized to Salman repeatedly, but Bhai was far from letting bygones be bygones.
Vishal Dadlani recorded a song with Arijit for Salman’s movie Sultan but at the last moment Salman rejected the song and it did not make it to the movie.
Arijit even penned a heartfelt apology letter to Salman but the egotistical ‘godfather’ of Bollywood wouldn’t have it any another way.
Salman’s altercation with Subhash Ghai in the late 90’s is well-known where in a fit of rage Salman had slapped the director. Salman Khan has admitted on the record of hitting the director.
“There are times when you do get out of control. That person hit me with a spoon, almost broke a plate on my face, pissed on my shoes and grabbed me by the neck. I could not control myself. And see what happened. Next day, I had to go and apologize.” Khan had said about the incident.
Being Human—the sin-laundering mechanism
Most of us have heard the term money-laundering but Salman Khan invented a new term and that is ‘sin-laundering’ and colloquially called it ‘Being Human’. Don’t be fooled by the positive PR work thrown your way by Salman Khan’s fans who continuously state that Khan has done so much work for the underprivileged.
Being Human is just an elaborate PR initiative started by Salman Khan in 2009 when his acting career started to resurrect and he needed to shed his old masochist bad-boy image.
The image of allegedly killing innocent people on footpaths to allegedly killing endangered blackbucks in the forest to allegedly killing the careers of flourishing talent, Salman Khan is the big-broody villain of the Bollywood industry. And until he enjoys such popularity amongst the masses, talent like Sushant Singh Rajput and Jiah Khan will be destined to end this way.