The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Wednesday registered an FIR against actor Rhea Chakraborty and some others under several sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
The move comes after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) – which is probing a money laundering angle into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput and has questioned his girlfriend Chakraborty – referred some evidence to the CBI and the NCB about her alleged links to banned drugs. Chakraborty’s lawyer has vehemently denied the charge.
The NCB has registered the FIR under Sections 28 (punishment for attempts to commit offences), 29 (punishment for abetment and criminal conspiracy) and 20-B (produces, manufactures, possesses, sells, purchases, transports, imports inter-State, exports inter-State or uses cannabis, shall be punishable). “Before registering an FIR, we have also taken legal opinion,” an official said.
While ED officials said they came upon certain data in the course of their probe and these “prima facie” inputs were shared with the two federal agencies, they did not give details about the nature of the data.
“Rhea has never consumed drugs in her life ever. She is ready for a blood test,” her lawyer Satish Maneshinde said in reply to the allegations.
While the CBI is probing the death of the 34-year-old actor, whose body was found hanging at his home in Mumbai’s Bandra on June 14, the NCB is the federal anti-narcotics agency.
Chakraborty, 28, has been grilled twice in this case by the ED and her statement recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
In her petition before the Supreme Court, she has stated she was in a live-in relationship with the actor.The ED money laundering case stems from an FIR filed by Rajput’s father K K Singh on July 25 with the Bihar Police in Patna, against Rhea, her father Indrajit Chakraborty, mother Sandhya Chakraborty, brother Showik, Rajput’s managers Samuel Miranda and Shruti Modi and unknown persons, accusing them of cheating and abetting his son’s suicide.
The agency has questioned a number of people in the case so far, including Showik, Indrajit Chakraborty, Miranda, Shruti Modi, the chartered accountants of Rajput and Rhea, Rajput’s flatmate and creative content manager Siddharth Pithani, and three other house helps who were present in the house on the day the actor died.
It has also questioned Rajput’s father and two elder sisters.
In his complaint to the police, Rajput’s father had alleged that an amount of Rs 15 crore was siphoned off from his son’s bank account in one year to the accounts of persons not known or connected to the late actor.
