Bollywood actor Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik, who have been arrested in connection with the drug link in Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, on Tuesday moved a bail plea in the Bombay High Court.
Their lawyer Satish Maneshinde said the plea will come up for hearing on Wednesday before a bench headed by Justice Sarang Kotwal.
The siblings filed the petition on a day when a special Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, court extended Chakraborty’s judicial custody till October 6.
She was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on September 8 for her alleged involvement in a drugs case linked to Rajput’s death on June 14. She was then sent to judicial custody for 14 days. The NDPS court had on September 11 rejected bail pleas of Chakraborty, her brother Showik, and others in the case, noting that there was no “reasonable ground” at present for not connecting the accused with the crime.
The actor, however, maintains that she is innocent and has been falsely implicated. She also claimed that during her custody, she was coerced into making incriminatory confessions and that the statement was retracted on September 8 itself.
Before the 28-year-old actor’s arrest, the NCB confronted her with Showik, Rajput’s house manager Samuel Miranda and his house staff Dipesh Sawant to ascertain their roles in an alleged drug racket.
Chakraborty has been charged under Section 8(c) (produce, manufacture, possess, sell, purchase, transport, warehouse, use, consume, import); 20(b)(ii) (punishment for contravention in relation to the cannabis plant and cannabis where such contravention relates to small quantity, involves quantity lesser than commercial quantity but greater than small quantity, involves commercial quantity); 22 (punishment for contravention in relation to psychotropic substances); 27A (punishment for financing illicit traffic and harbouring offenders); 28 (punishment for attempts to commit offences); and 29 (punishment for abetment and criminal conspiracy) of the NDPS act.
