Kangana Ranaut admits she’d never met Sushant Singh Rajput: ‘We never crossed paths, but were really close’

Actor Kangana Ranaut has admitted that she never met late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, but feels connected to him in an abstract way, which is enough for her to lead a crusade demanding a CBI investigation into his death. Sushant died by suicide on June 14, but Kangana has been saying repeatedly that he was pushed to the edge by a handful of powerful people in the film industry.

“Sushant and I, we never really crossed paths. But we were always really close, you know,” she told The Times of India, adding that he might have attended one of her birthday parties, but she didn’t speak to him. She said that she used to get updates about Sushant from actor Ankita Lokhande, who dated him from six years until 2016, and then worked with Kangana on the historical epic Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi.

She said that her Manikarnika producer, Kamal Jain, worked with Sushant on the MS Dhoni biopic and would tell her that she and him were a lot like each other. “Every now and then, he used to talk about Sushant. When I was learning horse riding, he used to say that he organised the training for Sushant also,” she said, mentioning a time when they didn’t meet because she had arrived at Kamal Jain’s office just after he’d left. “There was some kind of connection, but nothing direct,” she said.

Also read: Kangana Ranaut says Ankita Lokhande told her Sushant Singh Rajput suffered ‘so much humiliation’ and ‘could not take it’

Kangana said that her perception of Sushant was based on the blind items she’d read about him on the internet, that he was a ‘sex-crazed drug addict’. But the more she learned about him, the surer she became that Sushant had been systematically ostracised from the industry by a few powerful people. “See, I don’t want to be standing on some high ground and be like, I always knew Sushant. No, I did not. And to be honest, when I would read these blinds after blinds, news after news that he is a rapist, he is a sex addict, he is doing drugs, he is beating up his directors, I remember thinking vaguely, ‘What is up with this boy? He needs to get control of his life.’” she said.

Kangana also admitted that none of what she has alleged has come from Sushant directly, but is based on hearsay. “I want to be very honest. I can’t say that Sushant came and told me all this but I gathered my perception of him and I understood that he was trapped,” she said.

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