Sushant case: Rhea, brother quizzed for first time by CBI

MUMBAI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began questioning actor Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik Chakraborty on Friday in the case of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death.

Rajput’s flatmate and creative manager Siddharth Pithani, cook Neeraj Singh and domestic help Keshav Bachner, too, were questioned for the fourth consecutive day at the DRDO guest house in Santacruz (East) on Friday.

Meanwhile, Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials issued summons to a Goa-based hotelier, Gaurav Arya, and have called him for questioning on Monday in a parallel probe into allegations of money laundering related to the Rajput case. Arya runs Hotel Tamarind and Café Cotinga in Goa.

ED officials visited Hotel Tamarind at Anjuna, a coastal village in north Goa, but found the property shut. They stuck a notice on the door of the hotel, which, according to officials, has been shut since lockdown restrictions were enforced in March to contain the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The notice stated that Arya must meet Rajiv Kumar, assistant director, ED, at 11am on Monday in connection with a case filed under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

Arya has also been booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, and is being investigated by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). The NCB had on Wednesday registered a first information report (FIR) against Rhea, Showik, talent manager Jaya Saha, Rajput’s former manager Shruti Modi and Arya under sections 20, 22, 27 and 29 of the NDPS Act. Arya’s name cropped up in Rhea’s Whatsapp conversations related to drugs. ED officials, however, refused to divulge details of whether there were any financial transactions between Arya and Rajput, or Chakraborty.

On Thursday, the ED questioned Saha and also summoned Rhea’s father, Indrajeet Chakraborty, to access his family’s bank lockers in the Vakola branch of Axis Bank.

Rajput, 34, was found dead in his Bandra flat on June 14. The post-mortem report concluded he died by suicide. After a twoweek quiet, a controversy erupted over the death, as a Bihar police team constituted to probe the case on a complaint by the actor’s family alleged it got no cooperation from its Mumbai counterparts. The probe was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by the Supreme Court.

Chakraborty, who has been questioned multiple times by the agencies, has denied all allegations levelled against her.

Meanwhile, the Maharashtra unit of the Congress demanded an investigation into an alleged nexus between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and filmmaker Sandeep Ssingh in connection with Rajput’s death. The BJP hit back questioning why the Maharashtra police overlooked the “drug dealing angle” to the case and whether they were trying to shield some political leaders from the ruling Congress, Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance.

When HT called Singh for a comment, his phone was switched off, and he had not responded to a message till the time of going to press.