Bunty Sajdeh, the CEO of Cornerstone, was questioned by the federal investigative agency on the 3rd of September on as part of their ongoing investigation into the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who was found dead, hanging from his ceiling fan in his apartment in Bandra, Mumbai on the 14th of June. Six days prior to Mr Rajput’s death, his former manager, Disha Salian, had fallen to her death from a high rise building in Mumbai on the 8th of June and the circumstances leading to her death were not clear. Ms Salian was an employee of Bunty’s Cornerstone and had been handling the talent management aspects of Sushant Singh Rajput before handing them over to Shruti Modi, also an employee of Cornerstone.

According to a report in Zee News, Shruti Modi’s lawyer had claimed that Mr Rajput had been taking narcotics and they were supplied to him by Imtiaz Khatri, a film producer in Bollywood and a prominent figure in Bollywood’s social circles. Imtiaz is associated with the Khatri family who are into construction business and have been accused of embezzlement of funds associated with various Irrigation project contracts that were handed over to them between 1999 to 2009 by government departments controlled by Ajit Pawar, leader of the Nationalist Congress Party and the current deputy Chief Minister of the state of Maharashtra. Mr Pawar was formerly looking after the Irrigation, Rural Development and Water Resources departments between 1999 to 2009 when the alleged misappropriation of funds happened.

There have been no reports confirming whether the federal investigative agency will be questioning Imtiaz Khatri in relation to Sushant Singh Rajput’s death so far. Meanwhile, it is being reported that the investigators have summoned Bunty Sajdeh again for questioning to get an insight on Mr Rajput’s earnings through his firm.

Bunty Sajdeh established Cornerstone in 2008 and the company website describes him as “the ruler of seven kingdoms“. Some of Bunty’s high profile clients include Virat Kohli, the Indian cricket team captain and Sania Mirza, leading Indian tennis player. Ms Mirza joined Cornerstone in June 2020 and was formerly managed by KWAN Talent Management agency.

Bunty’s sister Seema Sajdeh Khan is married to actor and director Sohail Khan, youngest brother of superstar Salman Khan, who owns a talent management company called Uniword Being Talented (UBT), established in February 2018, a few months after Mr. Khan severed ties with Matrix Talent Agency who had been managing the actor since 2008.

In November 2018, Salman Khan’s UBT forged a partnership with Big Bang Media Ventures, the parent company of KWAN Talent Management, which had then been battling sexual harassment allegations on its co-founder and CEO, Anirban Das Blah, who was sacked from the company in October 2018 and his share of the company was taken over by his other partners – Madhu Mantena and Vijay Subramaniam who are now running KWAN. Following KWAN’s merger with UBT, Salman Khan’s company gained access to KWAN’s talent , its entire infrastructure and services and also its affiliate businesses in the rest of the country.

Some of KWAN high-profile clients include Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone and Indian cricketer Shikar Dhawan, who signed a 3-year contract with KWAN in August 2018. Jaya Saha, working for KWAN, is the talent manager of actress Rhea Chakraborty. Jaya previously used to report to Anirban Das at KWAN before he was sacked, and prior to joining KWAN, she worked for sports management company called Globosport where Anirban was the CEO before he left the company in 2009 to start KWAN.

Another co-founder of KWAN, Madhu Mantena, is also involved in the production and distribution of films across Hindi, Telugu and Bengali cinema. Madhu was married to leading fashion designer Masaba Gupta (the star of the 2020 Netflix film “Masaba Masaba” ) from 2015 to late 2018 after which the couple separated and got formally divorced in March 2019. Madhu was also the co-founder of Phantom films that he established in 2011 along with filmmakers Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Vikas Bahl. The company was dissolved in October 2018 following allegations of sexual misconduct against Vikas Bahl.

It is not clear whether actor Sushant Singh Rajput had an account with KWAN or Cornerstone or both as the talent managers Sushant had worked with have been associated with both KWAN and Cornerstone. Disha Salian, prior to joining Cornerstone, had worked for KWAN. Jaya Saha works for KWAN and Shruti Modi works for Cornerstone, but both are said to have handled Sushant’s work.

Apart from films, Sushant Singh Rajput was also involved with a technology company called “Innsaei Ventures” that he started in May 2018 along with enterpreneur Varun Mathur. Varun had previously worked as the director for Salman Khan’s Uniword Being Talented (UBT) until April 2018. It was reported that Sushant had walked out of a space film titled “Chanda Mama Door Ke” during its pre-production stage in order to make his own space film through Innsaei Ventures.

In addition to Innsaei, Sushant had also invested in technology company called Vividrage Rheality and a healthcare company called The Front World Foundation in collaboration with Showik Chakraborty, Rhea Chakraborty’s brother, who has been arrested on 5th of September by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in relation to the drugs-related probe associated with Sushant’s death.