Columnist and one-time playback singer Varsha Bhosle, daughter of legendary singer Asha Bhosle, was on Monday found dead at her Peddar Road residence with a bullet wound in the head. According to sources, Ms. Varsha shot herself with a licensed pistol.
“The incident occurred around 12.30 p.m. No suicide note has been found yet. We are trying to establish in whose name the pistol was registered, whether it was an imported weapon or not. Things will only be clear after an investigation,” Additional Commissioner of Police (South) Krishna Prakash told The Hindu.
Mr. Prakash said Ms. Varsha’s housemaid, Deepali Mane, knocked on her door in the morning. “When no one answered, she contacted Asha Bhosle’s driver who told her that Varsha might be sleeping. The driver finally entered the flat through Lata Mangeshkar’s adjacent flat and found Varsha lying in a pool of blood on a sofa, with the gun in her right hand.”
The 56-year-old divorcee is Ms. Bhosle’s daughter from her first marriage. She was said to have been undergoing treatment for depression.
She had attempted to take her own life on two occasions. In 2008, she took an overdose of sleeping pills.
Ms. Varsha had married sports writer and public relations professional Hemant Kenkre, but the couple divorced in 1998.
Asha Bhosle, who was in Singapore to attend the closing ceremony of the Marathi International Film and Theatre Awards (MIFTA), has rushed back to India.
Varsha Bhosle had written for a wide range of publications, including the Sunday Observer, the now-defunct Gentleman magazine and occasionally for The Times of India in the past.
A political science graduate from Elphinstone College, she frequently wrote for rediff.com, where she penned numerous columns on political and current affairs.
The body has been taken to J.J. Hospital, where a post-mortem is expected to be conducted late in the evening, said sources in the hospital.
