Rhea Hounded By Probe Agencies, Will Seek Justice: Lawyer

Following the Bombay High court's order granting bail to Rhea Chakraborty in the drugs peddling case, her lawyer Sathish Manishinde claimed that Rhea had been unfairly targeted by agencies who had zero evidence to incriminate her. Speaking as part of the panel hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai on India Today, the lawyer lashed out at the NCB, ED and CBI for putting his client under duress and lauded Rhea for remaining "steadfast" under scrutiny.

"In the connected case of Kshitij Prasad, the NCB threatened him that if he did not reveal the names of film stars and people from Bollywood they'd arrest him. Which happened," Manishinde said on air with India Today. "Therefore the investigations are totally malafide…I will go after each and every officer who hounded my client…once I collect enough evidence."

Panellist Rizwan Merchant suggested that the NCB was confident in stretching the case so far as they could not be acted against if deemed as operating in good faith.

On Wednesday, the Bombay High Court had remarked on the lack of drugs recovered from Rhea's person and also pointed out the presence of Section 27A of the NDPS Act was unfairly applied here, as Rhea could not be considered as harbouring a criminal.

" There is nothing at this stage to show Rhea had committed any offence involving the commercial quantity of contraband," the court said.

C.A Sundaram, Chief Advocate, termed the court order as a "slap on the face" for the NCB and expressed regret that the movement which had begun as an attempt to get justice for Sushant Singh Rajput had turned into a circus of sorts.

"What started off as a campaign for justice turned into 'Sushant was a drug addict', 'Sushant used his partner to get drugs for him'…I am sorry to say that if his family was intending to get justice for Sushant, [they] have only managed to tarnish his image after death," the advocate noted.

On Wednesday, Vikas Singh, the counsel for Sushant's family revealed that the family was pushing for a new forensic investigation into the actor's death as they were dissatisfied with the AIIMS report and alleged misconduct by Dr.Sudhir Gupta.

"This is ridiculous," advocate Sundaram said, adding that one could not make the evidence fit the conclusion rather than the other way around.

A former employee of Sushant, Dipesh Sawant was also granted bail along with Rhea, with Justice Kotwal of the High Court remarking that there was no evidence of him having dealt in or possessed commercial quantities of contraband substances at this point in time. Rhea's brother Showik was denied bail, citing his close connections to drug peddlers.

Showik and Dipesh were arrested in September while Rhea was arrested by the NCB in August.