Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Devendra Fadnavis on Friday clarified that no BJP leader had either “directly or indirectly” taken Shiv Sena legislator and Maharashtra Minister Aaditya Thackeray’s name in connection with the Sushant Singh Rajput case.

Speaking to reporters here after the inauguration of a COVID-19 facility at the city’s Baner area, Mr. Fadnavis said that the investigations into the Bollywood actor’s death had thrown up a number of surprising revelations.

Mr. Fadnavis wondered why these disclosures had not come to the fore prior to the Centra Bureau of Investigation (CBI) taking over the probe.

“The CBI took over the investigation 40 days after the unfortunate incident. What if evidence was tampered with during this period? There are media reports that hard-disks have been destroyed. So, the question arises as to whether the Mumbai police was under any political pressure all this while,” said the BJP leader.

While Mr. Fadnavis expressed confidence that the CBI would ultimately get to the bottom of the case, he opined that if only the agency had been involved right from the start then crucial evidence might have been prevented from being destroyed.

Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut had recently alleged a conspiracy to link Aaditya Thackeray, son of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, with the actor’s death.

Without actually naming the BJP, Mr. Raut had said that the Opposition could not face up to the fact that the Sena-led MVA government was in power in Maharashtra. Aaditya Thackeray had strongly denied any link with the case while stating that the Thackeray family was being targeted for no reason.

Earlier, Congress leader and spokesperson Sachin Sawant had tweeted a photo of Mr. Fadnavis being seen with film producer Sandip Singh, whose name has figured in the investigation surrounding the actor’s murky death.

In the picture, Mr. Fadnavis is seen along with actor Vivek Oberoi at the launch of a poster on the biopic on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The movie was produced by Mr. Singh.

Tweeting this picture, Mr. Sawant had sought a probe into the “BJP angle” in the case.

Responding to Mr. Sawant’s demand, Mr. Fadnavis said: “Now that Sachin Sawant’s party is part of the Shiv Sena-NCP (Nationalist Congress Party)-Congress MVA (Maha Vikas Aghadi) government, why weren’t these suspects [read Sandip Singh] questioned by the Mumbai police? This same person [Mr. Singh] was also the director or producer of a film on late Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray. This only proves that Sachin Sawant has not done his homework.”