A Special court here on Monday granted a bail to television comedian Bharti Singh and her husband Harsh Limbachiya against a bond of Rs 15,000 each in the drugs seizure and consumption case filed against them by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).
A day after they were sent judicial custody till December 14, 36-year-old Bharti and 33-year-old Harsh, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Esplanade Court allowed the bail application of Bharti and her script writer-producer husband Harsh and ordered their release against a bail bond for Rs 15,000 each.
While Bharti was arrested on Saturday evening, Harsh was placed under arrest by the NCB after 15 hours of questioning on Sunday morning.
Their arrests came after the NCB seized 86.5 grams of Cannabis during the raids conducted on their office and residence in north-west Mumbai on Saturday. While the NCB seized 65 gram of Cannabis from Harsh’s production house at Versova. 21.5 grams of the same drug and unaccounted cash of Rs 1.49 lakh were seized from the residence of Bharti and Harsh at Andheri’s Lokhandwala Complex.
Bharti is understood to have told officers that she would smoke weed procured by her husband. Harsh told the investigators that he purchased Cannabis from a peddler. Of the procured cannabis, he would keep a part of the contraband at his office, while he would keep the remaining drug at his for consumption.
During their questioning by the NCB, Bharti and her husband reportedly confessed to having possessed and consumed cannabis (ganja).
Both have been booked under sections 20(b)(ii)(A) (involves small quantity of drugs) and 8(c) (possession of drugs) and 27 (consumption of drugs) of the NDPS Act.
The raid on the homes of Bharti and her husband Harsh and their subsequent arrest came after their names figured in the custodial interrogation of a 21-year-old drug trafficker whom the NCB officials had arrested earlier the day on Saturday. During the raid conducted at a location in Khar Danda area, the investigators seized various drugs including 15 blots of LSD (commercial quantity), ganja (40 gm) and Nitrazepam (psychotropic medicines).
Bharti and Harsh are being investigated in connection with the Bollywood-drug mafia case registered by the NCB in the wake of the alleged suicide of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Sushant, it may be recalled, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in his closed room of his duplex flat at Mont Blanc building at Bandra’s Carter Road in north-west Mumbai on June 14.
Earlier, on November 9, the NCB had raided the residence of Bollywood actor Arjun Rampal on November 9, his and his live-in friend Gabriella Demetriades’ questioning and the subsequent arrest of his Australian friend Australian friend Paul Bartel was on Friday arrested by the NCB in the much-discussed Bollywood-drug mafia nexus case.
Rampal and Gabriella were questioned later. The NCB had earlier last month arrested a South African national Agisilaos Demetriades – the brother of Rampal’s live-in partner Gabriella Demetriades from Lonavla near Pune. Agisilaos is alleged to be a part of a larger drug syndicate operating in Bollywood, which is being investigated after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Earlier on November 8, the NCB officials had carried out searches at film producer Firoz A. Nadiadwala’s residence along Gulmohar Cross Road at Juhu Vile Parle Development (JVPD) Scheme in north-west Mumbai and seized a total of 717.1 gm of various drugs and arrested five persons, including Firoz A. Nadiadwala’s wife Shabana Saeed.
Nearly twenty persons –including Sushant’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik --- have so far been arrested in connection with a case registered by the NCB on August 28, two days after it registered a case suo moto.
The CB had registered a second case after it told the Mumbai court that it wanted to “to uproot the drug citadel in Mumbai especially in Bollywood”. Subsequently, Rhea was granted conditional bail by the Bombay High Court in the Sushant death-related drug case on October 7, 2020.
As part of the investigations, the NCB had earlier questioned Bollywood’s prominent actresses Deepika Padukone, Sara Ali Khan, Shraddha Kapoor and Rakul Preet Singh.
