Rhea Chakraborty granted bail in drug case related to Sushant Singh Rajput's death, walks out of jail

The bench has rejected the bail applications of Rhea's brother Showik Chakraborty and Abdel Basith Parihar

After 28 days in jail, late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s live-in partner Rhea Chakraborty is free after the Bombay High Court granted bail to her. She walked out of the jail on Wednesday evening.

An actor and model, Rhea (28), who was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), has been accused of sourcing and procuring drugs for Sushant, who had died by suicide on June 14.

However, the bail plea of Rhea’s brother Showik (28) has been rejected for alleged links with drug peddlers.

Justice Sarang V Kotwal of the Bombay High Court, who conducted the hearings last week, allowed bail to her.

“She is not part of a chain of drug dealers and has not forwarded the drugs, allegedly procured by her, to somebody else to earn monetary or other benefits…Since she has no criminal antecedents, there are reasonable grounds for believing that she is not likely to commit any offence while on bail," the order states.

Earlier, the Magistrate’s Court and the Special NDPS Court had rejected her bail application.

She was placed under arrest after the drug angle surfaced in the case during the investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) as the probe was handed over to the apex agencies from the Mumbai Police following an order of the Supreme Court.

Sushant’s father Krishna Kishore Singh and his sisters have alleged that Rhea and her family members and her team was responsible for the death of the actor and they also swindled Rs 14 crore from his accounts. Later, they also alleged that their son was murdered.

In the 70-page order, Justice Kotwal said: “I am unable to agree with the submission that giving money to another for consuming drug would mean encouraging such habit and would mean financing or harbouring as envisaged under Section 27A of the NDPS Act.”

The court went on to add: “The allegations and material against the present applicant are that on some occasions she had used her own money in procuring drugs. She facilitated procuring of drugs through her brother. For that purpose employees of Sushant Singh Rajput were also used. As discussed earlier, her acts would not fall under Section 27A of the NDPS Act.”

Raising some questions over the probe, it said: “The main Section which could be attracted in her case is violation of Section 8(c) of the NDPS Act, which is made punishable under Section 20 or Section 22. In that case, it is necessary for the investigating agency to show that her activities or contravention involved commercial quantity of a narcotic drug or psychotropic substance. The investigation did not reveal any recovery either from the applicant or from the house of Sushant Singh Rajput. It is their own case that the drugs were already consumed and hence, there was no recovery.”

Rhea's counsel Satish Maneshinde said that truth and justice have prevailed. "The arrest and custody of Rhea was totally unwarranted and beyond the reach of law....the hounding and witchhunt of three central agencies CBI, ED and NCB should come to an end," he said.