Sushant Singh Rajput was a brilliant Indian actor who is best known for his epic work in the Hindi film industry. He topped the bill in a number of commercially successful Bollywood films such as M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story in 2016, Kedarnath in 2018, and Chhichhore in 2019. Due to his benefaction to the film industry, he won a Screen Award and was nominated for the Filmfare Awards on two occasions.
After dropping out of his engineering program at the Delhi College of Engineering, Rajput started his career by entering the theatre industry in Mumbai. Then he began to act in Hindi television serials, and his debut show was the romantic drama Kis Desh Mein Hai Meraa Dil, released in 2008, followed by the lead role in the sitcom Pavitra Rishta from 2009 to 2011. He then made his Bollywood debut by transferring to a feature film Kai Po Che!, in 2013, which became a huge critical and commercial success. Followed by his leading role in the romantic comedy movie Shuddh Desi Romance (2013), another was the role of the titular detective in the action-thrill film Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! (, 2015).
He also starred in numeral films such as the reincarnation drama Raabta (2017), the action-thriller Drive (2019), and the historical drama Sonchiriya (2019). A supporting role in the satire movie PK (2014) and the titular role in the sports biopic of Mahindra Singh Dhoni were his highest-grossing releases. For his performance in the biopic, he became the winning nomination at the Melbourne and received his first Filmfare nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor. Apart from acting, he has been credited as the co-founder of a technological start-up and was the founder of a non-profit organization.
Rajput was 34 when he died via suicide at his home in Bandra, Mumbai, in June 2020. Dil Bechara (2020) was released postbellum on the streaming platform Hot star after his death.
Early life and education
Sushant Singh Rajput was born in district Patna in the state of Bihar, his father being Krishna Kumar Singh and his mother, Usha Singh. His father worked at Bihar State Handloom Corporation in Patna and now is a retired technical officer. Sushant was the youngest of five siblings. He had the nickname of Gulshan. Mitu Singh, who was one of his four sisters, is a state-level Indian female cricket player from Patna, Bihar. He first took his admission to St. Karen’s High School in Patna. Soon after his mother’s death in 2002, his family moved to Delhi, where Rajput completed his schooling in Kulachi Hansraj Model School for intermediate studies.
Rajput was an alleged reader and was very inquisitive in astrophysics and won the National Olympiad in Physics. He secured his seat in the Delhi College of Engineering, which was later renamed to Delhi Technological University. He pursued a Bachelor of Engineering degree in mechanical engineering. According to his words, he was not keen to pursue engineering, but his family gave him no option, which left him disappointed. Being a huge fan of superstar Shah Rukh Khan, he was interested in Bollywood, but he also wanted to become an air force pilot and later an astronaut.
Achievements
One of the outstanding achievements is that he won the Olympiad in physics, which proves that he was one of the brilliant individuals. During studying days, in the year 2003, he gathered the 7th rank in the DCE Entrance Exam. He was one of the fantastic and best dancers as he won the runner up in a dance show named Jhalak Dikhlaajaa. He also purchased land on the moon due to his keen interest in gathering facts about the universe. Hence, every day he used to watch the ground on the moon by his telescope, whose prize is set about as 55 lakhs. He had won various awards for his best performance in the serial “Pavitra Rishta” which was telecast on Zee T.V. In the year 2017, he has been nominated for the best actor by the Filmfare Awards. Sushant’s movie “MS Dhoni –The Untold Story” was a great hit at the box office.
Bollywood career
Rajput was brindled by the casting director of Kai Po Che! Mukesh Chhabra, who invited him for a screen test. He was then going to enroll at Stanford University for a course in filmmaking but decided to accept the proposal. He was subsequently casted in the role of a district-level cricketer who was a victim of politics in the selection fraternity, Ishaan Bhatt, and one of the three leads, along with Amit Sadh and Rajkumar Rao. The film was wholly based on the Chetan Bhagat novel called The 3 Mistakes of My Life; Abhishek Kapoor is the director of the film. The movie was released in 2013 and dealt with the life of the three friends who were affected by the 2001 Gujarat earthquake and the 2002 Gujarat riots and became a critical and commercial success. For his astonishing performance in the film, Rajput even received a nomination for the Filmfare Awards in the category of best debut actor.
Rajput was signed by Raj Kumar Hirani for a supporting role in the Aamir Khan starring satirical drama movie called PK, before the release of his debut film Kai Po Che! He was cast as the boyfriend to Anushka Sharma’s character as a journalist in the movie. After a while, he also entered a deal with Yash Raj Films, beginning with the leading role. The film PK was later released in the year 2014 and became the highest-grossing Indian film.
Sushant Singh Rajput was declared as the actor who would play the role of Dhoni in the biopic directed by Neeraj Pandey, which was titled M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story. The film was centered around the life of the cricketer, beginning with his days in childhood in the city of Ranchi and summing up to the 2011 Cricket World Cup that saw victory for India under his captaincy.
Rajput was also signed in by the producer Ekta Kapoor and the director Abhishek Kapoor for their film called Kedarnath. It was a love tale set in the stage of the 2013 floods in Uttarakhand, where Sushant co-acted with Sara Ali Khan. He played the character of a Muslim porter named Mansoor, who was a devotee of Lord Shiva and whose livelihood whirled around the Shiv temple in Kedarnath. The shooting of the film started in September 2017 and was ready to release by June 2018.
He was to feature in Rifleman, but the film could not be made as it got into legal trouble over copyright issues later after its announcement. He had opted out of the production of the Chanda Mama Door Ke in the previous years stating that the timing was a conflict in scheduling for its shooting and had also said that he would produce his own space movie through Innsaei Ventures. Rajput was lastly signed in for the directorial debut of Mukesh Chhabra; Fox Star Studios had employed Chhabra for a Bollywood remake of The Fault in Our Stars, a Hollywood hit film which was a 20th Century Fox production. The shooting of the movie begins in the city of Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, on 9 July 2018. The movie was initially titled Kizie Aur Manny Based on the novel of the exact name “The Fault in Our Stars” written by John Green and was timed to release in theatres in 2019. Rajput acted alongside Sanjana Sanghi and played the character of a patient of the bone cancer osteosarcoma named Manny; the role was a reprisal of the role of Ansel Elgort in the Hindi remake. It also notably featured musical compositions of A. R. Rahman and Saif Ali Khan for a small part. The release date was later moved to 8 May 2020, and the title was renamed to Dil Bechara. Due to the restrictions implied during the lockdown COVID-19 pandemic, the slated release of the film, however, did not occur. In the end, it was released on the streaming platform Disney+ Hot star after his death and became a record-breaker in the first 24 hours viewership, having accumulated approximately 95 million viewers.
Controversies
• Rajput’s relationships have been a subject of widespread media attention. In 2011, Rajput publicly proposed to Ankita Lokhande his Pavitra Rishta co-star during a national broadcast of the dance competition reality show named Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa. The couple soon began dating after their first meeting on the set of Pavitra Rishta, where they had been cast as spouses to each other onscreen. In 2012, they began a live-in relationship, and reports of a forthcoming marriage between the two occasionally showed up in the media.
• In 2018, he was the subject of another rumor regarding Sara Ali Khan, his Kedarnath co-star. The stories were never confirmed as before that the two of them assumingly broke up, Rajput ever refused to comment on the claims. Later in the following year, it was turned up that he was dating actor Rhea Chakraborty and that they had the intention to keep the matter private. Rajput and Chakraborty were occasionally spotted on “dates” and outings in Mumbai, and they even went on a vacation to the Himalayan region of Ladakh.
• After his death, Chakraborty confirmed that she was his girlfriend and that he refuses to take medication, and he mainly relied on yoga and meditation. According to his father, the actor mentioned his planning to marry and settle in the upcoming year 2021 but did not reveal who his bride was.
• His death was a topic of controversy for months, which lead to the reveal of drug takers in the Hindi film industry. Riya Chakravarty and his brother were taken into the command for his suicide and drug racket, and further were sent to jail. Many other actors were also arrested considered for the same.
Death
On 14 June 2020, Rajput, who was just 34, was found dead hanging from the ceiling fan in his home in Bandra, Mumbai. In the reports, he had shown signs of clinical depression and was also suffering from bipolar disorder. The Mumbai Police started to investigate, stating that the death was being treated as a suicide. The post-mortem report also noted that the cause of death was asphyxia due to hanging, and officers called it a clear case of suicide. The autopsy doctors attentively placed the time of death at 10 to 12 hours before post-mortem examination on 14th June at 11:30 p.m.—implying between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
