Rhea Chakraborty
After three days of questioning, Rhea Chakraborty was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) here in a drugs case linked to her boyfriend and actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Rhea has now been remanded for 14-day judicial custody. Her bail application has also been rejected. She has been sent her in judicial custody till September 22 after the NCB said it did not want her custody as it has already questioned her for three days. Her lawyer Satish Maneshinde said they will approach sessions court for bail.
The sections of the NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Act invoked against her include 8(c) (sale, possession or manufacture of banned drugs), 20(b) (ii) (possession or use of small quantity of banned drugs), as per her lawyers.
"Rhea has been arrested under sections 27A, 21, 22, 29 and 28 of NDPS," said K P S Malhotra, Deputy Director of NCB.
After the arrest she was taken for medical tests including COVID-19 test to the civic-run Sion hospital in Central Mumbai. Before leaving for hospital in a vehicle with NCB officials, the actor, clad in black, waved at media persons.
She was accompanied by a woman police official too.
At the hospital, her antigen test for COVID-19 came out negative, officials said.
She was then taken to the NCB office around 7. 15 pm, where she was to be produced before the court through video conferencing.
Speaking to media persons, Mutha Ashok Jain, NCB Deputy Director General, South West region, said the central agency had enough evidence to arrest her.
But no contraband was recovered from her and the NCB doesn't need her custody for interrogation and would be seeking judicial custody, hesaid.
The NCB would, however, oppose bail for any of the accused in the case, Jain added.
"(The Persons) with whom we had to confront her (Rhea) they were already in our custody. We are calling her for questioning for the last three days and after her interrogation we are satisfied," he said.
Earlier the NCB had arrested her brother Showik Chakraborty, Sushant Singh Rajput's manager Samuel Miranda and his domestic help Dipesh Sawant in the case.
In the morning, when Rhea reached the NCB office at Ballard Estate in South Mumbai around 10.30 for questioning, she was seen carrying a bag.
In her TV interviews, she maintained that she never took drugs.
Her lawyer Satish Maneshinde called her arrest a "complete travesty of justice. "Three central agencies hounding a single woman, just because she was in love with a drug addict and a person suffering from mental health issues," he added.
Rajput, who allegedly hanged himself at his Bandra residence here on June 14, had been treated by five leading psychiatrists in the city, Maneshinde claimed.
Rhea Chakraborty was recently interrogated by the CBI probe team as she is the main accused in the abetment of suicide case filed by Rajput's father, and also by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case.
She has denied all the allegations many times.
