Top Bollywood star Deepika Padukone has been questioned by India’s Narcotics Agency in a drug probe following the death of young actor Sushant Singh Rajput earlier this year.
The 34-year-old Padukone, during a shooting at the West Beach Resort in Goa, reached the office fees of the Narcotics Control Board (NCB) in Mumbai on Saturday after receiving a summons earlier this week. Media reports say no drugs were seized from him.
After the death of Rajput (body 34), the NCB started investigating the Bollywood drug, whose body was found from his Mumbai residence in June.
# Deepikapadukon NCB office fees arrived today. pic.twitter.com/wE3btZDltK
– Filmfare (@ Filmfare) September 26, 2020
According to local media, Padukone was being questioned as to whether prohibited drugs had been purchased for use after an interval of phone messages to create questions with local contacts.
He is among more than a dozen Bollywood professionals who have been questioned by the NCB over the past two weeks over alleged links to the movie industry with drug peddlers and cartels.
Karisma Prakash, Padukone’s manager, was questioned on Friday.
Earlier this week, the TV channel TimesNow aired several sections of a conversation about the acquisition of Hash, alleging that the two people chatting were Padukone and his manager.
At least three other Bollywood actresses – Sara Ali Khan, Shraddha Kapoor and Rakul Preet Singh – have also been summoned by the NCB.
Kapoor and Khan, both daughters of well-known Bollywood actors, appeared before the agency on Saturday, while Singh’s statement was recorded on Friday.
Filmmaker Karan Johar, who has also been a target of TV channels and social media users since Rajput’s death, said in a statement on Friday that the allegations of drugs at a party organized by his party at his residence in July last year were “false and baseless”.
Johar’s response came after an old video of a star-studded party at his residence surfaced on social media.
While the investigation into Rajput’s death is ongoing, the saga is hidden in the multi-million dollar film industry’s investigation into drug use in Bollywood by the authorities.
Rajput’s death also sparked media frenzy in India’s news channels, which speculated that his ex-girlfriend, actress Riya Chakraborty, chased him away to kill him with drugs and black magic.
Controversial reports by Rajput family members that he was suffering from depression and openly accused Chakravarti, 28, of stealing his money and harassing him.
The actress, who denied any wrongdoing, was arrested earlier this month on charges of buying marijuana for a Rajput. He and his family were arrested by the media after being sentenced for months.
