Bengali actor Rupa Dutta was arrested for allegedly committing theft at the International Kolkata Book Fair, the police said on Sunday.
She was produced before a local court on Sunday, which remanded her to police custody for a day.
Dutta was arrested by the Bidhannagar North police station on Saturday evening, after the police found several wallets, containing cash amounting to around Rs 65,000, in her possession. Moreover, officials had also witnessed her dumping some wallets in a dustbin.
Following this, she was detained and questioned by the police. However, she failed to give any satisfactory answers, according to a senior police officer of the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate.
The police reportedly also found a diary in her bag, in which she maintained a record of her alleged stealing or pickpocketing. In addition to this, the diary contained names of crowded spots in Kolkata, which are said to have been the actor’s usual targets.
Dutta has been booked under IPC sections 379 (theft) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) after sub-inspector Jayanta Nath Saha of Bidhannagar North Police Station filed a complaint.
Saha said the actor was arrested in connection with “kepmari” (attention-diverting theft) and noted that further investigation is underway to find out whether more people are connected with the crime.
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When she was produced in court on Sunday, Dutta claimed that she had seen the bag with the wallets lying inside the dustbin as she was dumping a cold drink bottle. The actor further said that she had simply picked up the bag that was already in the bin when she found herself arrested by the police officer.
The court reportedly questioned the police about why there were no eye-witness statements or complaints from victims of the alleged theft.
Dutta was previously in the news in 2020, when she had accused filmmaker Anurag Kashyap of sending her inappropriate and sexually-suggestive messages on Facebook in 2014. She had also shared screenshots of the same on Twitter. However, it was later revealed that the person who had sent the messages was someone else with the same first name as the filmmaker.