The drug world, according to the Mumbai Police, uses certain codes for the banned substances. Alia Bhatt means cocaine; Anushka Sharma, hashish; Kangana Ranaut, afeem (opium); Katrina Kaif, smack; Nargis Fakhri, ecstasy; and Priyanka Chopra, LSD. “The names of drugs keep changing as it is a strategy to throw the cops off guard,” said Yashpal Purohit, a Bombay High Court lawyer who has handled several drug cases in Mumbai and Pune.
Nomenclature aside, the Narcotics Control Bureau does seem to be hot on the trail of a drug cartel that allegedly has ties with Bollywood. On September 8, the bureau arrested actor Rhea Chakraborty, the former girlfriend of the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act for procuring and consuming drugs. She is currently in 14-day judicial custody at Mumbai’s Byculla jail.
In its remand application, the NCB said that Rhea was “an active member of a drug syndicate connected with drug supplies”. It said that her WhatsApp messages indicated that she bought the drugs along with Sushant and gave instructions in this regard to his house manager Samuel Miranda, house help Dipesh Sawant and her brother Showik Chakraborty. On September 11, Rhea was denied bail. If found guilty, she could be jailed for up to ten years.
This story is from the September 27, 2020 edition of THE WEEK.
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This story is from the September 27, 2020 edition of THE WEEK.
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