“Sushant began hearing voices ...Rhea got frightened & left”

“It is Parveen Babi all over again,” Mahesh Bhatt had said about Sushant Singh Rajput’s rapidly deteriorating mental condition. He advised  Sushan’s girlfriend Rhea Chakravarty to leave.

These are some of the revelations on Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide made by writer  Suhrita Sengupta, a close associate of filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt in whose company Suhrita met Sushant for the last time.

“Sushant had come to meet Bhatt Saab for a possible role in Sadak 2. They hit it off instantly, Sushant was a talker. He held forth on every topic under the sun. Sushant could speak on Quantum physics as well as cinema,” says Suhrita sorrowfully.

Bhatt Saab identified the melancholy under Sushant’s constant exuberance. “He had seen it in Parveen Babi and he knew there was nothing that would be done except medication. Rhea who stuck on in spite of  Sushant’s rapid descent into depression tried her best to ensure that Sushant would take his medication. But he refused.”

Without medication, Sushant’s depression got worse.

“During the last one year, he had cut himself completely from all outside contact. Rhea was with him until she could take it no longer. There came a time when Sushant began hearing voices. He began to feel people were trying to kill him. One day an Anurag Kashyap film was playing in Sushant’s home and he told Rhea, ‘I  said no to an offer from Kashyap. Now he’s going to come to kill me.’ That’s when  Rhea was too frightened to stay with  Sushant any longer,” says  Suchitra.

Rhea quit the relationship.

“She had no choice. Bhatt Saab told her there was nothing she could do. If she stayed on she would lose her sanity too. Rhea waited for Sushant’s sister to come to Mumbai and take charge. Sushant’s sisters tried their best to support and comfort him. But he was beyond listening to anyone. He wouldn’t take his medication,”  confides Suhrita.

In his final months, Sushant was locked away in his own mental prison, suffering intensely. Unable to let anyone reach into his dungeon of darkness as he plunged deeper and deeper into it.