Bollywood actress Rhea Chakraborty was granted bail on Wednesday, nearly a month after being arrested for allegedly buying drugs for her ex-boyfriend, actor Sushant Singh Rajput, whose suicide sparked a media storm in India.
Rajput, 34, was found dead in June in his Mumbai apartment, triggering a national frenzy with television news channels speculating that Chakraborty drove him to take his own life with cannabis and black magic.A star with many hits to his name, Rajput’s suicide initially triggered a debate over mental health in India’s multibillion-dollar movie industry.
But Rajput’s family disputed reports that he suffered from depression and accused Chakraborty, 28, of stealing his money and harassing him. She has strongly denied the allegations.
On Wednesday, a court in Mumbai ordered that the actress be released on bail, her lawyer Satish Maneshinde said, calling it a victory for “truth and justice”.
“The arrest and custody of Rhea was totally unwarranted and beyond the reach of law,” he said in a statement.
Her brother Showik, who was also arrested last month, remains in custody.
Chakraborty and her family have been hounded by Indian media who spent months obsessing over the case. Some celebrities, including actresses Vidya Balan and Sonam Kapoor, have accused TV channels of subjecting her to a “witch-hunt”.
The country’s top anti-crime agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has been probing Rajput’s death since August, while the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has been looking into his consumption of cannabis. CBI is the federal agency that handles high-profile investigations in India.
The Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences completed its forensic examination earlier this month and reportedly ruled that the actor had died by suicide, not murder, dismissing speculative claims made by some TV channels.
The saga has now morphed into a probe of drug use in Bollywood, with police and the NCB hauling in superstar Deepika Padukone and other actresses for questioning last month.
Rajput was unusual among Bollywood stars in that he did not come from one of the industry’s many powerful families, hailing instead from Bihar, India’s poorest state.
Abandoning his engineering studies in Delhi for Mumbai, he got his big break in 2013 and won acclaim for his portrayal of Indian cricket hero Mahendra Singh Dhoni in a hit 2016 biopic.
In an interview with AFP that year, he spoke of the emotional rollercoaster he experienced while filming the movie, which portrayed the heartbreak suffered by Dhoni when his girlfriend died.
“After we did the preparation, in my head I was him and everything that was happening was actually affecting me,” he said.
Top Bollywood star Deepika Padukone has been questioned by India’s narcotics agency in an escalating drugs probe following the death of young actor Sushant Singh Rajput earlier this year.
Padukone, 34, arrived at the Narcotics Control Board’s (NCB) office in Mumbai on Saturday after receiving a summons earlier this week while on a shooting stint in the western beach resort of Goa. Media reports say no drugs have been seized from her.
The NCB started the Bollywood drug probe after the death of Rajput, 34, whose body was found at his Mumbai residence in June.According to the local media, Padukone was being questioned on whether she procured banned drugs for consumption following an interception of phone messages regarding making queries with local contacts.
She is among more than a dozen Bollywood professionals who have been questioned by the NCB in the past two weeks over the movie industry’s alleged links with drug peddlers and cartels.
Padukone’s manager Karishma Prakash was questioned on Friday.
Earlier this week, TV channel TimesNow broadcast sections of a WhatsApp conversation about procuring hash, alleging that the two people chatting were Padukone and her manager.
At least three other Bollywood actresses – Sara Ali Khan, Shraddha Kapoor and Rakul Preet Singh – have also been summoned by the NCB.
Kapoor and Khan, both daughters of famous Bollywood actors, appeared before the agency on Saturday, while Singh’s statement was recorded on Friday.
Filmmaker Karan Johar, who has also been a target of TV channels and social media users since Rajput’s death, on Friday said in a statement that allegations of narcotics being consumed at a party hosted by him in July last year at his residence were “false and baseless”.
Johar’s response came after an old video from a star-studded party at his residence surfaced on social media.While an investigation into Rajput’s death is continuing, the saga has morphed into a probe by authorities into drug-taking within Bollywood, a multibillion-dollar film industry.
Rajput’s death also sparked a media frenzy with India’s news channels speculating that his former girlfriend, actress Rhea Chakraborty, drove him to kill himself with narcotics and even black magic.
Rajput’s family disputed reports that he suffered from depression and openly accused Chakraborty, 28, of stealing his money and harassing him.
The actress, who denies any wrongdoing, was arrested earlier this month for allegedly buying cannabis for Rajput. Her arrest came after she and her family were hounded for months by the media.
