Sushant Singh Rajput death: Rhea Chakraborty's lawyer says she's 'ready for arrest', calls the case 'witch hunt'

Rhea Chakraborty’s lawyer Satish Maneshinde has called the Sushant Singh Rajput case a “witch hunt.” He added that the actor is prepared for an arrest and has not applied for anticipatory bail. Chakraborty on Sunday, 6 September, appeared before the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) for questioning in the drugs case linked to the death of her Sushant Singh Rajput. Advocate Maneshinde, who represents Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik, said in a statement, “Rhea Chakraborty is ready for arrest as this is a witch hunt and if loving someone is a crime she will face the consequences of her love. Being innocent, she has not approached any court for Anticipatory Bail in all the cases foisted by Bihar Police now with CBI, ED and NCB." Check out the tweet here

#NewsAlert – NCB starts questioning Rhea on the drugs angle. @Herman_Gomes reports from outside the NCB Office.

Join the broadcast with @vandanaseb. #RheaDrugsLink pic.twitter.com/5xRsMujrjh

— News18 (@CNNnews18) September 6, 2020

A team led by NCB joint director Sameer Wankhede had visited Rhea’s house located in Mumbai accompanied by local police and some women personnel. The agency has said it also wants to confront Rhea with Showik, Miranda and Sawant in order to ascertain their individual roles in this alleged drug racket after it obtained mobile phone chat records and other electronic data that suggested some banned drugs were allegedly being procured by these people.

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. The NCB, over the last two days, has arrested her younger brother Showik Chakraborty (24), Rajput’s house manager Samuel Miranda (33) and Dipesh Sawant, a member of the actor’s personal staff, in this case. It is claimed that Miranda told NCB investigators that he used to procure bud or curated marijuana for the late actor’s household. Sawant was arrested on Saturday and he is expected to be produced by the agency before a local court on Sunday for seeking his custody. A total of 8 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 probe 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 back, 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 Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (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 suburban Bandra area on 14 June. (With inputs from Press Trust of India) * A collection of Suicide prevention helpline  numbers are available here. Please reach out if you or anyone you know is in need of support. The All-India helpline number is: 022 2754 6669