Former OpenAI researcher turned whistleblower Suchir Balaji’s parents have initiated legal action against San Francisco Police demanding that the police investigation records into the mysterious death of their son be made public. The lawsuit has been filed by Balaji’s parents- Balaji Ramamurthy and Poornima Rao-who have alleged that police is illegally shielding public records.
The lawsuit filed in county court shows Balaji’s parents state the San Francisco Police Department has been protecting “public records illegally” about Balaji’s death circumstances. 26-year-old Balaji was found dead in his apartment on November 26 last year under mysterious circumstances and the police had initially termed his death as alleged suicide.
However his parents have claimed foul play in the case pointing out towards his whistleblowing activities against OpenAI, his former employer. Suchir was one of the instrumental figures behind creation of ChatGPT of OpenAI but had quit the company later in 2024 to turn into a whistleblower against the copyright infringement practice adopted by OpenAI.
Suchir’s parents are now fighting a case in court to receive all police findings which San Francisco Police discovered on November 26 in his Lower Haight apartment. Joseph Goethals and Kevin Rooney represented the parents in their lawsuit which refuted San Francisco police department’s position that releasing documents during an ongoing investigation would be inappropriate because police operations appeared to indicate the case had reached its end.
Petitioners and their legal team faced continuous obstruction since the passing of Suchir two months ago in their attempts to gain knowledge about the circumstances and reasons behind his fatal death according to the lawsuit filed by Petitioners. Through issuing this petition they aim to eliminate police interference preventing transparency in this case.
Why Suchir’s parents are objecting to police investigation?
The San Francisco Medical Examiner concluded that Balaji died from suspected suicide but the official autopsy results remain pending due to ongoing toxicological examination. San Francisco police stated that their investigation found no criminal involvement which led them to hand the case over to medical authorities.
The family of Balaji filed the lawsuit Friday to share details from their independent autopsy which ran in December. The private medical exam determined Balaji died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound yet this shooting pattern was described as “atypical and uncommon in suicides” in court documents. The lawsuit failed to disclose when the independent autopsy established how Balaji met his death.
Throughout the reporting process, the family refused to share the full results of the independent autopsy report except to say that it lacked particular information. Dr. Joseph Cohen served as the forensic pathologist in the autopsy after his career in Riverside County chief forensic pathologist between 1999 and 2010 based on his information on LinkedIn.
Also Read: Portrait of a Whistleblower: Suchir Warned Us About Perils of AI
