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Rediff.com  » News » Sushant case: NCB grills Rhea for about 6 hours

Sushant case: NCB grills Rhea for about 6 hours

Source: PTI   -  Edited By: Hemant Waje
Last updated on: September 06, 2020 22:39 IST
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Actress Rhea Chakraborty was on Sunday questioned for about six hours by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the drugs case linked to the death of her live-in partner and actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

 

IMAGE: Rhea Chakraborty outside NCB office after being summoned for questioning in connection with the death by suicide case of Sushant Singh Rajput, at Ballard Estate in Mumbai, on Sunday. Photograph: PTI Photo

The 28-year-old arrived at the agency's office in the Ballard Estate area at 12 noon and left shortly after 6 pm. She was escorted by police personnel.

NCB Deputy Director General (south-west region) Mutha Ashok Jain told reporters outside the agency's office later that Rhea will be called again on Monday for questioning and recording of her statement like Sunday.

He said the agency also conducted fresh raids in this case against a man identified as Anuj Keshvani after his name came to the fore during the interrogation of Kaizan Ebrahim who was arrested by the agency in this case earlier.

"We have seized 590 gms of hashish, 0.64 gm of LSD sheets, 304 gms of marijuana including imported marijuana joints and capsules, Rs 1,85,200 in cash and 5,000 Indonesian Rupiah after the raids on Keshvani,"' Jain said.

"The quantity of LSD that has been recovered is commercial quantity under the NDPS Act," he said indicating it is an offence to keep such quantity of banned drugs.

LSD or Lysergic acid diethylamide is a hallucinogenic drug.

The DDG refused to share details of the ongoing investigation.

"I cannot tell you specifics... because of your (media) cooperation we are getting a lot of information," Jain said when asked by reporters about Rhea's statement made to the agency.

The day started with an NCB team visiting Rhea's home in Santa Cruz (west) to serve summons to her for joining the probe.

The agency has said that once Rhea deposes, it wants to confront her with her younger brother Showik Chakraborty, 24, Rajput's house manager Samuel Miranda, 33, and his house staffer Dipesh Sawant to ascertain their roles in this alleged drug racket after it obtained mobile phone chat records and other electronic data that suggested some banned drugs were allegedly procured by these people.

The NCB, over the last two days, has arrested these three men in this case.

Officials said the actor was questioned on these lines on Sunday.

She was earlier questioned by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation too.

Rhea, in interviews given to multiple TV news channels, has said that she has never consumed drugs herself. She had, however, claimed that the late actor used to consume marijuana.

It is claimed that Miranda told NCB investigators that he used to procure bud or curated marijuana for the late actor's household.

A total of eight people have been arrested till now by the NCB with six being directly linked to this probe while two were arrested by it when the investigation was launched under criminal sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

When the probe in the case began, the agency had arrested two men, Abbas Lakhani and Karan Arora, for alleged drug peddling and officials have claimed that through them they reached Zaid Vilatra and Abdel Basit Parihar who are allegedly linked to this drugs case as they were in touch with Miranda.

Miranda, they had said, used to allegedly procure drugs from them on the purported instructions of Showik, agency officials said.

Both Lakhani and Arora have been granted bail. The NCB had said it recovered 59 grams of cannabis from them.

The NCB, while seeking remand of one of the accused in this case a few days ago, had told a local court that it was looking into 'the drug citadel in Mumbai, and especially Bollywood' in this probe.

This case has given the NCB an 'inkling' into the narcotics network and its penetration in Bollywood or Hindi movie industry, NCB Deputy Director General Mutha Ashok Jain told reporters on Saturday.

Various angles surrounding the death of the 34-year-old actor are being probed by three federal agencies, including the ED and the CBI.

The NCB initiated a drug angle probe in this case after the ED shared with it a report following the cloning of two mobile phones of Rhea.

Rajput was found dead at his flat in the suburban Bandra area on June 14.

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Source: PTI  -  Edited By: Hemant Waje© Copyright 2024 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.
 
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