Prison officials told me I would get 25 years in jail: Chrisann Pareira

Indian actor Chrisan Pareira was released on bail after spending 17 days in a Sharjah jail, where she was arrested for allegedly possessing drugs. Pareira claims she was framed by a baker named Anthony Paul, who sent her to Sharjah for an audition. She discovered drugs inside a trophy she was carrying, along with a chit that said "the joke will be on you." Pareira spent her time in jail without being able to communicate with others due to a language barrier. She managed to speak to her family after 17 days and learned about her situation in Mumbai.

“In the initial days of my incarceration in a Sharjah jail, the only people I could interact with were prison officials who kept on telling me that I would be put behind bars for 25 years because the charges for possessing drugs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were very serious,” actor Chrisan Pareira told media persons outside Mumbai police headquarters on Thursday.

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“It was very depressing as I was not able to speak to my family and was not even sure if they knew where I was,” she said.

Pareira, 27, landed in the city on Wednesday after a Sharjah court granted her bail in a drugs case.

Narrating the episode, she said she was sent to Sharjah by Borivali-based baker Anthony Paul to give an audition for an international web series. Soon after she stepped out of the airport, she did not find the car that was to receive her and to her shock she also discovered that no hotel was booked in her name, she said.

“As the battery of my phone was dying, I again entered the airport to charge my phone. That is when I saw that Ravi (Rajesh Babhote, one of the accused arrested for framing her) started deleting all the WhatsApp chats he had exchanged with me,” she claimed. “The first thought that came to my mind was perhaps it was a job scam. Then I called my father and informed him about it.”

Pareira said she suspected that something was wrong and approached the airport police. “The police scanned my baggage but did not find anything. When they smashed the trophy, I was carrying, they found marijuana stuffed inside.”

The trophy also contained a chit that said, “the joke will be on you”, the actor said, adding that a female police officer then told her that they had found a similar chit in a drugs-laced cake seized from a male passenger. “Till then I was completely relaxed and was reading a book.”

Since there was no female officer at the airport, the police took her to a jail for asking her a few questions and a few minutes later, formally arrested her for bringing drugs to UAE, Pareira said.

“They put me in a cell where there were 35 people of varied nationalities, including locals, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, and people of African origin. I could not communicate with any of them because of the language barrier. However, the positive aspect was that the jail was centrally air-conditioned and there was a television set and other facilities,” she said.

After spending 17 days in prison, she managed to speak to her family members and got to know about what was happening back in Mumbai, the actor said. “Though the jail had good medical services, with a psychiatrist checking inmates and a nurse doing rounds every morning and evening, I had a tough time staying there. My mother started sending me money which I used to buy essentials and to make calls to my family.”

When asked about Paul, who was arrested for allegedly framing her and one more Borivali resident and trying to frame three others using the same modus operandi, the actor said she learnt about Paul’s real agenda on her 20th day in jail.

She said she had briefly interacted with him, as they lived in the same locality, but did not think there was anything personal in it. “I think he was profiling several freelance artistes....people who were looking for work all the time,” she said, adding, “Every second I spent in the Sharjah jail after I learnt that he had framed me, I wondered why this person would do that.”

She said after she was released on bail on April 24, she spent some good time with her relatives in the UAE and even visited Burj Khalifa on their insistence, though she was obviously not very excited about it.

Pareira was allegedly framed by Paul and his two accomplices – Babhote, 42, a deputy general manager with IDBI Bank, and Shantilal Rajput, an electrician who had allegedly arranged the drugs to plant them on the actor. She was sent to Sharjah with a trophy filled with drugs, and the trophy was said to be part of her audition script, police said. Rajput was also arrested, and a court granted him bail.