Karan Johar and Kshitij Prasad
Kshitij Prasad was arrested by the Office of Narcotics Control on Saturday after being questioned in the drug investigation related to the death of Sushant Singh Rajput.
- News18.com
- Last update: September 28, 2020 1:14 PM IST
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Former Dharmatic Entertainment (the digital arm of Dharma Productions) employee Kshitij Prasad, who was arrested by the Office of Narcotics Control on Saturday after being questioned in the drug investigation related to the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, has alleged that he was “forced to falsely implicate” filmmaker Karan Johar and his other top executives in the case, reports NDTV.
“NCB officers said they would let me go if I implicated Karan Johar, Somel Mishra, Rakhi, Apoorva (Mehta), Neeraj or Rahil,” Prasad’s attorney, Satish Maneshinde, said in a Mumbai court on Sunday, reported NDTV.
Investigative officers “asked me to falsely allege that they were using drugs,” he said. “I refused to comply with this despite the pressure put on me, as I did not know any of these people personally … and did not want to falsely implicate anyone,” Prasad was quoted as saying.
Prasad was picked up by a team of NCB detectives, led by its area director, Sameer Wankhede, at his residence in suburban Versova on Friday. He was questioned at the NCB’s Ballard Estate office. “After his arrest on Saturday, he was taken to the hospital for medical tests, including for COVID-19,” an official told the PTI news agency.
The Prasad name came up during the NCB’s broader investigation. On Friday, NCB had also questioned Anubhav Chopra, who was once associated with Dharma Productions, regarding the nexus between drugs in the Hindi film industry.
In a statement released on Friday, director and producer Karan Johar said that Prasad had joined Dharmatic Entertainment, sister company of Dharma Productions, in November 2019 as one of the executive producers under contract for a project, which ultimately did not materialize. . Johar added that Chopra was briefly associated with his banner as an assistant director and worked on only two projects.
“He was briefly associated with us for just two months as a second assistant director of a film, between November 2011 and January 2012 and as an assistant director of the short film in January 2013. Since then, he has never been associated with Dharma Productions for any other project, ”the director had said.
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