Is the Sushant Singh Rajput case a part of AltBalaji's Cartel?

It has been more than a year since Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput decided to end his life. However, it looks like various shows and movies still bank on the incident every now and then or at least leave a hint about it. Cartel, produced by Ekta Kapoor's AltBalaji, is the latest addition to the list.

The show has a sequence on a well-planned murder, tagged off as a suicide, precisely what the speculations around the Sushant Singh Rajput case hinted at. Moreover, it recreates an iconic tribute paid off soon after.

In Cartel, an actress named Ramya is killed. The murderer (a close friend of a movie producer named Chairman) murders her after Chairman (Ashwath Bhatt). Ramya's s****l partner Yograj (Mrinal Dutt) later plans to get her out of the way forever.

Chairman ends up saying on a public platform (here, a news channel) that he and everyone else killed her because they held a phone instead of her hand. Does this ring a bell?

Not yet? Karan Johar had posted, "I blame myself for not being in touch with you for the past year..... I have felt at times like you may have needed people to share your life with...but somehow I never followed up on that feeling...will never make that mistake again...," soon after the news of Sushant's demise came out in 2020.

Calling it 'noisy and energetic but isolated times', he had added, "I hope this resonates with all of you as well...."

In the series, Chairman says that Ramya wasn't depressed when questioned about the same. Again, depression was widely associated with Sushant's case.

Here, though, Ramya is shown as someone who blackmails producers to get a role in a film. The film's name is Pyaar Ke Pacchas Rang and many actors were fighting for the lead role, especially the female lead. This is again a speculation bounced off - that Sushant lost out of projects because of somebody powerful and influential.

While it does appear that Cartel hints at the case, it could be a total coincidence, for most parts of the script were penned down in 2019. The show, which mainly focuses on the politics in a family, went on floors the same year.

Apart from AltBalaji, Cartel can also be streamed on MX Player. The platform has launched MX Gold with the show, with the subscription priced at Re. 1/day.