Soon after the news of the untimely death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death hit the headlines, there has been an exhaustive list of Television and Bollywood celebs who have died after allegedly committing suicide. In yet another such case, one of the writers of the popular Sony Television’s comedy series Taarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashmah died of suicide on November 27. The police have registered a case of accidental death after Abhishek Makwana (37) was found hanging at his Kandivali residence in north Mumbai.
A suicide note was reportedly recovered by the cops in which Makwana mentioned the financial crisis he was going through over the past couple of months as a reason for his suicide.
The family of the writer has, however, claimed that Abhishek Makwana had been a victim of cyber fraud and blackmail. The family said that even after the writer’s death, they have been receiving threat calls. They are continually being pressurised to pay back the loan amount taken by Abhishek. His brother, Jenis, reportedly said that he became aware of these issues after Abhishek’s death when he began receiving phone calls.
He said: “I checked my brother’s mails because ever since he passed away, I got multiple phone calls from different numbers demanding to be paid back loans he owed someone. One call was a number registered in Bangladesh, one in Myanmar and others were from different states of India.”
“From what I understood from the email records, my brother first took a small loan from one of the ‘easy loan’ apps that charge a very high rate of interest. I looked at the transactions between them and my brother closely after that. I noticed that they kept sending small amounts despite my brother not applying for the loans. Their interest rates are as high as 30%,” Jenis added.
Jenis told reporters that the loan sharks became all the more abusive when he informed them of his brother’s death and that he and his family are not in a position to discuss the issues right away.
Meanwhile, the police have launched a probe and have approached the bank for transaction details to learn more on the fraud allegations. A police officer investigating the case was quoted saying: “Right now, there is no solid evidence of the fraud or that the company was harassing the deceased. As and when we establish anything, we will proceed with the necessary action against the company.”
The comedy series Taarak Mehta ka Ooltah Chashmah first aired on 28 July, 2008 in Sony Pictures Network India’s channel, Sab TV. Recently the sitcom hit the milestone of 3000 episodes.