For two months after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty continued to “procure” and “pay” for drugs that the late actor consumed. In the process, she abetted his “extreme drug addiction”.
These are some of the bewildering draft charges the Narcotics Control Bureau has brought against Chakraborty and 34 other people in the case over Rajput's death.
The draft chargesheet, filed in a special court last month, accuses Chakraborty and the others, including her brother Showik, of “criminal conspiracy” to “procure, purchase, sell and transport” drugs – including ganja, charas, LSD and cocaine – and then “distribute” these drugs to “high society” and “Bollywood”. This conspiracy, the NCB claims, took place “without valid permit or authorisation” in the Mumbai metropolitan region.
Rajput died in June 2020, allegedly by suicide. His death spiralled into a media circus and Chakraborty, who is also an actor, was the subject of numerous media trials and social media campaigns, all of which accused her of being responsible for her boyfriend’s death.
The NCB arrested Chakraborty in September 2020 in a drug case linked to Rajput’s death. She was granted bail the following month. In August that year, the Central Bureau of Investigation had filed an FIR against her and others, invoking charges of criminal intimidation and conspiracy.
The Enforcement Directorate had also lodged a money laundering case against her but later said it found no evidence.
In March last year, the NCB filed a 12,000-page chargesheet naming Chakraborty, her brother, and others. This chargesheet, Hindustan Times reported, went “beyond Sushant Singh Rajput's death and traced the trail of narcotics – its sourcing and then distribution – in Mumbai”.
In an investigation spanning six months, the bureau interrogated multiple Bollywood personalities, including Sara Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Shraddha Kapoor and Rakulpreet Singh.
In the draft charges filed by the NCB, Chakraborty is accused number 10 out of a total of 35 accused. Thirty eight charges have been outlined against them.
The NCB claims Chakraborty received “many deliveries of ganja” from her brother, Samuel Miranda, Dipesh Sawant and others and “handed over those deliveries” to Rajput. She’s also accused of paying for these deliveries at the behest of Showik and Rajput “during the period March 2020 to September 2020”. The charges name other accused – some of whom were among those arrested in September 2020 – as having “accessed” ganja to “circulate it in high society and Bollywood”.
For instance, one Zaid Vilatra is accused of procuring ganja between March and August 2020 from “Abbas Lakhani, Karan Arora, Mohammad Kaizan Ibrahim” and others and supplying it to other accused to be passed on to Rajput.
Another accused, Abdel Basit Parihar, is named as having “provided the number of drug peddlers” so that Showik and others could “buy ganja and charas from them”.
Showik is charged with “keeping in contact with drug peddlers in order to secure ganja and charas for Rajput”.
Rajput’s former flatmate, Siddharth Prithani, is also among the accused – he is charged with, among other things, “abetting Rajput to extreme addiction” and “procuring ganja for Rajput”.
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