Rhea’s brother, Sushant’s house manager arrested in narco case

Mumbai, Sep 4 (IANS) Tightening the noose around Rhea Chakraborty, the Narcotics Control Bureau on Friday night arrested her brother Showik and Sushant Singh Rajput’s house manager Samuel Miranda as part of its probe into the drug angle in the Bollywood star’s death.

According to NCB officials, the duo was arrested after 10 hours of questioning and after the agency got adequate evidence against them about their involvement in the drug case.

Earlier in the day, the NCB also carried out searches at the residences of Showik and Miranda. They also seized Showik’s laptop and mobile phone.

The NCB had also told a court that Showik used to order ganja and marijuana from drug-peddler Abdul Basit Parihar, who has been arrested, and made payments to him over Google Pay.

Showik and Miranda will be produced before a court on Saturday.

An NCB official said that the agency will seek their custody for interrogation and to confront them with the other arrested accused.

The official said that the duo will also be grilled over information from seized laptops and chats obtained by the agency.

The NCB registered a case under various sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, naming Rhea, her brother, talent manager Jaya Saha, Sushant’s co-manager Shruti Modi, and Goa-based hotelier Gaurav Arya, on August 26 after the Enforcement Directorate wrote to it about the drugs angle.

This followed discovery of WhatsApp messages between Rhea and Shruti Modi, Miranda and Sushant’s flatmate Siddharth Pithani.

NCB is the third Central agency to join the probe into the death of Sushant, after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the ED.

The revelations about the link between Showik and Parihar were made by the NCB in a Mumbai court as Parihar was produced before it.

The court sent Parihar to the NCB’s custody till September 9. Besides Showik, Miranda and Parihar, the NCB has also arrested Zaid Vilatra, Abbas Lakhani and Karan Arora and seized ‘bud’ (curated marijuana) from them.

There were a few mentions of ‘bud’ in purported social media messages between people involved in the case.

According to an NCB official, detailed network analysis and the follow up investigation uncovered the links between Lakhani and Vilatra. The latter also revealed that he earns a substantial amount of money from drug peddling, especially of bud.

–IANS

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