Hearing in Mumbai Sessions Court today
A day after her arrest in a drug case related to the Sushant Singh Rajput death, actress Rhea Chakraborty on Wednesday moved a bail plea before a sessions court.
“The bail pleas of Rhea and her brother Showik Chakraborty will come up for hearing in the Mumbai Sessions Court on Thursday, their lawyer Satish Maneshinde said on Wednesday.
Rhea and Showik face similar charges of sourcing and procuring drugs for Sushant, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a closed room of his rented duplex flat in Mount Blanc at Bandra’s Carter Road in north-west Mumbai on June 14.
In his application seeking bail for Rhea, Maneshinde said his client was “innocent”, “has not committed any crime whatsoever” and that “she has been falsely implicated in the case”.
In one of the several grounds cited by for bail to Rhea, Maneshinde said: “The application has been arraigned for an offence punishable under Section 8 (c) read with 20 (b) (ii)22, 27A,28, 29 and 30 of the NDPS Act, 1985. Given that no drug and psychotropic substances have been seized from the applicant and the allegations. If any, would pertain strictly to small quantities, and given that though Section 27 A has been applied, the ingredients have thereof not been made out, the bar under Section 37(1) of the NDPS would not apply in the present circumstances. Thus the offence, if any, is bailable in nature, the Applicant ought to be enlarged on bail”.
Maneshinde, who has also moved a bail application for Showik, said Rhea and her younger brother had cooperated with the investigations. “The allegations against the applicants would at the most make out a case of purchasing of drugs which is a bailable offence. There is no shred of evidence to connect the applicants with financing of any illicit traffic or harbouring any offenders,” he said.
Rhea and Showik are among 10 accused arrested in connection with the drug case related to Sushant Singh Rajput’s death. The other arrested accused are: Abbas Lakhani, Karan Arora, Zaid Vilatra, Abdel Basit Parihar, Anuj Keswani, Kaizan Ibrahim, Samuel Miranda and Dipesh Sawant.
The NCB’s case is based on 59 grams of curated marijuana seized from alleged drug peddlers Abbas Lakhani and Karan Arora who were arrested earlier, and have now been granted bail.
More seizures were made from Anuj Keshvani based on the disclosure from Kaizan Ibrahim, who according to the NCB is another drug peddler who supplied marijuana to Showik Chakraborty and Samuel Miranda through Abdel Basit Parihar.
Keshwani, whose role has made the investigations more complicated, is under examination for questioning. In a statement detailing the drugs seized from Keshwani, the NCB has said: “In continuation of operations against the drug syndicate, a raid was conducted in Mumbai by Mumbai Zonal Unit, NCB. The following drugs were seized: 590 grams of hashish, 0.64 gm of LSD sheets, 304 gms of marijuana, including imported marijuana joints and capsules, Rs 1,85,200 in cash and 5,000 Indonesian Rupian”.
The quantity of LSD that has been recovered is commercial quantity under NDPS Act.
Rhea -- whose brother Showik was arrested along with late actor’s house manager Samuel Miranda by the NCB on Friday night in connection with the Sushant death-related drug case - was questioned about the WhatsApp exchanges between Rhea and others that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had shared with the CBI and NCB alleging “procuring and usage” of drugs.
It was on the basis of this WhatsApp message trail that the ED had joined the investigations on August 26 into the allegations that Sushant’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty used to procure banned drugs illegally from dealers and administer them to the late actor.
It may be recalled that in the messages accessed by a few television channels on August 25-26, Rhea talks about drugs and in a chat between her and Gaurav Arya who is allegedly a drug dealer, Rhea writes: “In case we speak about hard drugs, I haven’t been doing too much. Tried MDMA once”. In another message sent to Gaurav Arya, she asks: “You have MD?”.
In the first chat message, Miranda writes to Rhea “Hi Rhea, the stuff is almost over”. In the next message, Jaya Saha tells Rhea: ‘Use 4 drops in tea, let him sip it …. Give it 30-40 mins to kick in’. Then, there emerges a message in a chat between Rhea & Jaya Saha: “I have asked him to coordinate with Shruti (Modi) & reach it up”. In yet another message, Rhea writes to Jaya Saha “Thank you so much” Reply from Jaya: “No problem bro, hope it helps”.
In the seventh and last accessed chat message, Miranda writes to Rhea: ‘Should we take it from Showik’s friend? But he has just hash & bud’.
The WA chat messages hint at the fact that Rhea was allegedly procuring drugs for use by the actor.
On her part, Rhea had earlier denied consuming drugs and said that she was prepared for a drug test anytime. She, however, admitted that Sushant used to take marijuana and despite her efforts, she could not control him.
During the 19-long hours of grilling carried out during a span of three days, Rhea reportedly admitted that she had procured drugs for Sushant through her currently arrested brother Showik Chakraborty, that she had acknowledged that she knew about Samuel purchasing drugs for the actor from drug peddler Zaid Vilatra and that she had accepted that she had accepted drug-related WhatsApp chats between her and others.