Bollywood-drugs Probe: NCB to file 12,000 Page Charge Sheet in Court

MUMBAI:
Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) is all set to file a whopping 12,000-plus pages charge sheet against at least 33 persons, including film actress Rhea Chakraborty, her brother Showik and others in the Bollywood-drugs mafia probe case arising out of the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, officials said here on Friday.

The charge sheet, to be filed before a Mumbai Special Court, follow two cases registered by the NCB after an intimation from the Enforcement Directorate, which was probing the financial angles in Sushant’s death on June 14 last year.

An NCB team with trunk-loads of the voluminous charge sheet and other papers reached the Special NDPS Court here to file it before a Special Judge.

According to senior NCB sources related to the probe, the drug law enforcement agency will be filing the first charge sheet running in over 12,000 pages against around 33 accused till date.

Besides Rhea, a girlfriend of Sushant and her brother Showik, the NCB sources said the late actor’s ex-manager Samuel Miranda, his house help Dipesh Sawant, drug peddler Anuj Keshwani, from whom commercial quantity of drugs (LSD sheets and marijuana) were first recovered, figure in the charge sheet.

There are two foreign nationals Agisilaos Demetriades, the brother of actor Arjun Rampal’s South African girlfriend and model Gabriella Demetriades, Kshitij Prasad, a former executive producer connected with Dharma Productions and two college students who are said to be the last mile peddlers, who are named.

However, senior officials remained tightlipped on the issue and declined to come on record.

In August last year, the NCB Mumbai had registered two cases related to the drugs angle which emerged in the investigations into Sushant’s death.

Moving swiftly, the NCB had arrested Rhea and Showik, and several other persons in September last year, creating an upheaval in Bollywood circles.

The Chakraborty siblings and several other arrested-accused are currently out on bail.

On the morning of June 14, 2020, Sushant, 34, was found hanging at his duplex rented flat in a posh building in Bandra, triggering a massive furore in Bollywood and political circles.

Subsequently, the NCB spread its net wide and questioned several celebrities, including Sara Ali Khan, Shraddha Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Rakul Preet Singh, Karishma Prakash, and had nabbed comedian couple Bharti Singh and Haarsh Limbachiyaa, who are now bailed out.

Simultaneously, the NCB has gone hammer and tongs after the drugs mafia in Mumbai with a series of seizures and arrests from Mumbai and surroundings in the past six months.

The Maharashtra government has repeatedly demanded that the CBI should make public the findings of the probe into Sushant’s death — whether it was suicide or murder — in public interest.