Actor Rhea Chakraborty on Tuesday requested the Bombay High Court to dismiss a petition, filed by the sisters of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, to quash a first information report against them for forging and procuring a fake medical prescription for their brother, PTI reported.
Chakraborty, who is accused of abetting the suicide of Rajput, is the complainant in the case. In an affidavit, she told the court that allegations against Priyanka Singh and Meetu Singh are serious.
On October 6, Rajput’s sisters had moved the Bombay High Court to quash the FIR filed against them by the Mumbai Police. In the complaint, Chakraborty has accused Rajput’s sisters and doctor Tarun Kumar of the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi of forging a prescription of medicines meant for anxiety that are banned under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.
“Rajput died merely five days after he obtained the said prescription, wherein he was unlawfully prescribed psychotropic substances at the behest of his sister [Priyanka] and Dr Tarun Kumar,” Chakraborty said in her affidavit. “It needs to be investigated whether Rajput consumed the medicines prescribed, which may have contributed to his death and/or further deteriorated his mental health.”
She said the inquiry in the case against the sisters is at a nascent stage, and argued that the investigating agencies needed more time.
The affidavit claimed that Rajput had a “tumultuous relationship” with his family and was also suffering from mental health problems, for which he was undergoing medical treatment. “In January 2020, Rajput went to Chandigarh to meet his family. After he returned, he said he was discontinuing his medications and treatment,” the affidavit said. “In March 2020, when the country was hit by [the] Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown was announced, Rajput appeared stable initially, but with each passing day his mental health started deteriorating.”
Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai apartment on June 14, in what the police initially said appeared to be a case of suicide. Chakraborty, who was eventually arrested for consuming drugs, was granted bail on October 7. “The investigation did not reveal any recovery either from Rhea or from the house of Sushant Singh Rajput,” the Bombay High Court order said.
Investigation into Rajput’s death also put Bollywood in muddied waters after the Narcotics Control Bureau claimed to have unearthed a close nexus between illegal drug consumption and the film industry. On October 12, top Bollywood filmmakers and producers filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court against “irresponsible reporting by certain media houses” around Rajput’s death. The lawsuit was filed against Republic TV and Arnab Goswami and Pradeep Bhandari of the channel, and Times Now and its prominent anchors Rahul Shivshankar and Navika Kumar.
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