The NCB filed a charge sheet against 33 accused in the case, including Rhea and her brother Showik Chakraborty, in March. THE NCB on Friday arrested Siddharth Pithani; housemate and friend of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, in connection with the narcotics case in which actor Rhea Chakraborty was earlier arrested by the agency. Following the charge sheet; Pithani is the second person to be arrested; taking the total number of arrests in the case to 35. An official said that Pithani was charged with being part of the conspiracy to supply drugs in the Sushant Singh Rajput case.
NCB Mumbai then gathered intelligence about Pithani’s whereabouts and it came to light that he was in Hyderabad.
Pithani was the one who reportedly found the actor dead in his bedroom on June 14, 2020. NCB issued him a notice under section 67 of the NDPS Act, asking him to join the investigation but he did not honour the notice, said zonal director Sameer Wankhede of the NCB, Mumbai.
The NCB statement regarding Siddharth Pithani:
The NCB said that in spite of repeated summons to Pithani to join their investigation and appear for questioning; he was absconding. “We issued notices to him but he refused to turn up at the NCB office and remained absconding;” an official said. He was produced before a court in Mumbai on Friday; remanded in NCB custody till June 1. Pithani, who was trying to make a career in Bollywood; had been staying with Rajput for a year. He was one of the last people the actor spoke to before his death by suicide. The agency also recorded statements of Bollywood actors Deepika Padukone, Rakul Preet Singh, and Sara Ali Khan during their probe.
👇🏻Video of #SSR flatmate Siddharth Pithani arrested @narcoticsbureau pic.twitter.com/BWgcNjT0Mn
— Adv.Vivekanand Gupta 🇮🇳 (@vivekanandg) May 28, 2021
Earlier this month, on May 7, the NCB arrested Hemant Shah alias Maharaj from Miramar, Panjim, in Goa for his alleged role in the actor’s death case. Maharaj’s name had cropped up during an operation in a local seizure case. Shah had allegedly supplied drugs to two local suppliers; Anuj Keshwani and Regal Mahakaal; who were arrested in September and December; last year, respectively; in the drug probe related to the actor’s death. Keshwani and Mahakaal had revealed Shah’s involvement in the supply of drugs. NCB filed a charge sheet in the first week of March and named 33 accused, including the late actor’s girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty. This charge sheet contained statements of 200 witnesses.