The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Monday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court order granting bail to actor Rhea Chakraborty who was arrested over drugs-related charges in actor Sushant Singh Rajput‘s death case, reported Bar and Bench.
On October 7, 2020, the Bombay High Court had granted bail to Chakraborty and had asked her to deposit a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh. While the actor was given bail, her brother, Showik Chakraborty, however, was still kept in custody. The siblings along with Abdel Basit Parihar, Samuel Miranda, and Dipesh Sawant were arrested in September 2020 by the NCB after being accused of having facilitated the procurement of drugs for consumption by Rajput.
Chakraborty was also directed to appear before the nearest police station every day for 10 days after she was released on bail. She was told not to leave the country.
The fresh petition filed by the NCB will come up for a hearing before a bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and Rama Subramanian. According to the apex court’s website, the case will be heard on Thursday.
Earlier, refusing a stay order on Chakraborty’s bail, Justice Sarang V Kotwal had said, “I have held that all offences under the NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Act are non-bailable. (Rhea) is not part of the chain of drug dealers. She has not forwarded the drugs allegedly procured by her to somebody else to earn monetary or other benefits… Since she has no criminal antecedents, there are reasonable grounds for believing that she is not likely to commit any offence while on bail.”
Recommended
Earlier this month, the NCB’s Mumbai Zonal Unit had submitted an 11,700-page charge sheet naming the Chakraborty siblings along with Agisilaos Demetriades (brother of Arjun Rampal‘s partner Gabriella Demetriades) and Kshitij Prasad (former Dharma Productions employee), along with 29 others. The charge sheet focused mainly on the confiscation of narcotics and psychotropic substances that falls under the provisions of Section 20(B), 22, 23 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act from the accused.
Rajput died by suicide on June 14, 2020, in Mumbai. His death had not only sparked a mental health conversation but also resulted in a massive drug probe within the Hindi film industry.