Vikas Singh, a senior advocate who represented Sushant Singh Rajput’s family following the actor’s death in 2020, has delivered a blistering critique of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and its investigative style.
“The NCB is desperate to gain media attention, and essentially all of these cases are being pursued in order to do so,” the lawyer told NDTV.
The lawyer’s remarks come on the heels of Shahrukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan’s arrest and subsequent bail in a drugs-on-cruise case earlier this month.
Mr Singh was defending Sushant Singh’s father, KK Singh, in a legal battle with actor Rhea Chakraborty over the Bollywood star’s death in June 2020. Mr Rajput’s suicide sparked a wave of investigations into the film industry’s alleged drug connections.
Over the last year, the NCB has questioned a number of film industry figures, and in several of those investigations, personal WhatsApp chats and messages have allegedly been selectively leaked to the media.Many have blamed the leaks on the agency’s Mumbai Zonal Director, Sameer Wankhede, who is now facing allegations of payoffs made by an NCB witness in an affidavit. The Mumbai Police have taken his statement and launched an investigation. Mr Wankhede has denied the allegations, claiming they are part of an attempt to sabotage the ongoing drug investigation. He filed a petition with the Bombay High Court, which ruled that any action against him must be preceded by three days’ notice.
They are primarily targeting first-time users, and our children in Delhi inform us that drugs are consumed at parties by children. If this is the NCB’s standard, they should begin raiding parties in Delhi attended by prominent individuals “Mr Singh stated this during his discussion of Aryan Khan’s case.
“It is not acceptable for them to simply pick on Bollywood (the Hindi film industry headquartered in Mumbai) and paint it in a negative light, as if Bollywood is teeming with drug addicts.” This is not the NCB’s proper attitude. Rather than pursuing the big fish, they are diverting people’s attention “he continued.
Aryan Khan, 23, was arrested on October 2 after the National Crime Bureau allegedly discovered WhatsApp chats on his phone during a search of a Mumbai cruise ship. He was arrested on October 8 and taken to Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail, where he was today released on bail. Although the anti-drug agency discovered no drugs on him, it claimed in court that his WhatsApp chats revealed his involvement in “illicit drug deals” and connections to a foreign drug cartel.
