ED shares 'drugs linked' information on Rhea Chakraborty with CBI, NCB

Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is probing a money-laundering angle into the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput and has questioned his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, has referred some evidence to the CBI and the Narcotics Control Bureau about her alleged links to banned drugs, a charge vehemently denied by her lawyer.

The officials said that the central probe agency stumbled upon certain data and these “prima facie” inputs have been shared with the two federal agencies but did not give any details of the nature of evidence referred to the agencies.

“Rhea has never consumed drugs in her life ever. She is ready for a blood test,” her lawyer Satish Maneshinde said in reply to the allegations.

While the CBI is probing the death case of the 34-year-old actor, whose body was found hanging at his duplex flat in Mumbai’s Bandra area on June 14, the NCB is the federal anti-narcotics agency.

Rhea, 28, has been grilled twice in this case by the ED and her statement recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

She is the prime accused in this case and has stated in her petition before the Supreme Court that she was in a live-in relationship with the actor.

The ED money laundering case stems from an FIR filed by Rajput’s father K.K. Singh on July 25 with the Bihar Police in Patna against Rhea, her father Indrajit Chakraborty, mother Sandhya Chakraborty, brother Showik, Rajput’s manager Samuel Miranda and Shruti Modi and unknown persons accusing them of cheating and abetting his son’s suicide.

The agency has questioned a number of people till now in the case including Showik, Indrajit Chakraborty, Miranda, Shruti Modi, the chartered accountants of Rajput and Rhea, Rajput’s flat-mate and creative content manager Siddharth Pithani and three other house help who were present in the house on the day the actor died by suicide.

It has also questioned Rajput’s father and two elder sisters. In his complaint to the police, Rajput’s father had alleged that an amount of Rs 15 crore was siphoned off from his son’s bank account in one year to accounts of persons not known or connected to the late actor.