Rhea’s Purulia village hails clean chit to actor in Sushant Singh Rajput death case
Times of India | 24 March 2025
12 Baghmundi (Purulia): More than 1,700 kilometres from the bustling Mumbai, villagers in Tunturi — a nondescript hamlet in Purulia's Baghmundi — on Sunday were "happy and relieved" that actor Rhea Chakraborty was finally given a clean chit by the CBI in the Sushant Singh Rajput death case. Rhea has ancestral links with this village. As a five-year-old, she had once visited the village with her parents during Durga puja over two-and-a-half decades ago, recollected the villagers.
The next they heard about her was on television during her Sep 2020 arrest. "Bhalo lagche (it feels good)," said Jamuna Mura, a local resident, who had seen Rhea as a toddler in Tunturi some 27 years ago. The villagers said they always believed that Rhea would stand vindicated. "Though I have not seen her – or their family – in person, ever since I have been living in this village after my marriage, I always get to hear about them and their family's ancestral links with this village. We have been following the news around her. We do not understand the issues but feel happy that she got a clean chit," said Purnima Singh Mura, another local. The villagers recalled how Rhea's father Indrajit Chakraborty donated money for upkeep of the local temple when the family had visited Tunturi with Rhea, a kid then. The donation was used to make the temple storeroom. The room is being used till date.
Rhea's landlord grandfather Sirish had earned the sobriquet of ‘Diwan Sahib' in the village. The family's sprawling, but dilapidated, ancestral home becomes a hub of festivities every Durga Puja. Sirish had also donated 28 bighas for building a school and a health centre in the village in 1967.
"It has been many years that they have not come here. But their work, and links to this village, is known to all here," Nihar Baran Ray, an elderly villager, said while expressing happiness over closure of the case.