Tupac Shakur fans are convinced a glaring medical discrepancy proves the rapper faked his death

Tupac Shakur died after being gunned down in a drive-by shooting in 1996, but eagle-eyed fans aren’t convinced it was the real deal

Tupac Shakur would have been 51 today if he hadn’t been gunned down in a drive-by shooting in 1996.

Aged just 25, fans were devastated when the rapper was shot dead four times outside Club 662 in Las Vegas while pulling up in a black BMW owned by Death Row Records boss Suge Knight.

With wounds to his chest, arm and thigh, Tupac was taken to the emergency room, where he fought for his life for six long days before dying of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest after a lung was removed.

During this nerve-wracking time, his entourage kept a constant watch for fear the gunmen would return to take another bang.

But this week in the hospital is just as mysterious as the murder itself. And conflicting accounts of his condition have given new life to conspiracy theories that claim he faked his own death.

Fans have long argued that the story has far too many gaps.

In that case, officials said he was unconscious the entire time, while friends insisted he was laughing and joking in bed just before his death.

According to the first officer to arrive at the scene, Chris Carroll, a retired sergeant with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Tupac lost consciousness after pulling him out of the car.

“I kept asking, ‘Who did that? Who shot you?’ And he basically always ignored me,” Carroll recalled.

“And then suddenly, with a snap of his fingers, he changed. And he went from talking about difficulties, not being cooperative, to being like ‘I’m at peace’. And then I looked at him and said again: ‘Who shot you?’

“He looked at me and he took a breath to get the words out and he opened his mouth and I thought I was actually going to get some cooperation. And then the words came out: ‘F*** you.’

“After that, he started gargling and passed out. At that point, an ambulance showed up and he passed out.”

Carroll rode him in the ambulance to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada but said he never woke up.

In blatant defiance, however, Death Row Records boss Suge insisted Tupac was in excellent condition at the hospital — so much so that he couldn’t understand how the rapper could have deteriorated to such an extent.

“I mean, when I left the hospital, Pac and I were laughing and joking,” he told the documentary Who Shot Biggie & Tupac.

Hinting that Tupac could have pulled a quick one, he continued, “I don’t see how anyone can go from performing well to performing poorly.”

When asked if he thinks the rapper might still be alive, he replied, “I’ll tell you that with Pac, you never know.”

Tupac’s fiancé Kidada Jones, also the rapper, woke up to the sound of Don McLean’s Vincent playing on a CD player by his bed.

She described how his eyes were swollen and filled with mucus and told Vanity Fair she heard him moan and saw his eyes open.

“If you can hear me, move your feet,” she told him before the sheets at the foot of the bed began to rustle.

“Do you know that I love you? Do you know that we all love you?” she said before he nodded.