Sushant Singh Rajput death: Sisters petition to quash FIR against them adjourned to October 13

In her complaint, Rhea Chakraborty accused Priyanka Singh and one Dr Tarun Kumar of Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi of prescribing Rajput medicines that were prohibited under the NDPS Act

The Bombay high court on Tuesday posted the petition filed by Priyanka Singh and Meetu Singh, the sisters of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, for quashing of the first information report (FIR) registered against them by Bandra police, for further hearing on October 13.

Sushant Singh Rajput. (HT Archive)

The bench of justices SS Shinde and MS Karnik adjourned the hearing as no one appeared for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the counsel for Rhea Chakraborty, the actor on whose complaint the FIR was registered on September 7, 2020, sought time to respond to the petition.

In her complaint, Chakraborty has accused Priyanka Singh and one Dr Tarun Kumar of Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi of prescribing medicines for Rajput which were prohibited under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.

The 28-year-old actor alleged that the doctor prescribed a banned medicine, Clonazepam, to Rajput, which might have resulted in chronic anxiety and ultimately led Rajput to kill himself. She has blamed Priyanka Singh and other members of Rajput’s family for his untimely death.

In the petition filed through advocate Madhav Thorat, Rajput’s sisters, however, claimed that the medicine was not banned and the guidelines issued by the Medical Council of India on April 11, 2020 for telemedicine “allows the medicine to be prescribed to a patient even at the first consultation.”

“A bare perusal of the complaint along with the FIR shows that the statements made therein do not make out any cognisable offence,” states the petition. It adds that the lodging of Chakraborty’s complaint was nothing but a feeble attempt on her part to scuttle the investigation against herself and blame Rajput’s family members for his suicide, as she was on the verge of being arrested by Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).

It adds that no criminality could be attributed to the petitioners, especially when the complaint was solely based on medicines prescribed by a doctor. In support of their contention, they relied on a 2005 Supreme Court judgment in Jacob Matthew’s case, in which the apex court held that no offence against a medical practitioner can be investigated without first obtaining the opinion of experts in medical field.

The petition also highlighted that there was an inordinate delay of 90 days in lodging the police complaint—the medicines were prescribed on June 8, 2020, the day Rajput asked Chakraborty to leave his house, and the complaint was lodged on September 7, 2020.

A day after the FIR was registered, NCB arrested Chakraborty after interrogating her for three consecutive days in connection with the drug trail that came to the fore following Rajput’s death.

Meanwhile, Chakraborty’s lawyer Satish Maneshinde issued a statement which read: “It is disturbing to learn that the family of SSR and its lawyers are interfering and tampering with the investigations by bringing pressure on the AIIMS team of doctors by speaking to them during investigations and releasing purported audio recoded conversations and information to the media in order to bring pressure and tamper with potential witnesses. The SSR family lawyer is supposed to have said that he is going to meet the CBI director to get the family’s pre-determined path of investigations in SSR death. It is very disturbing to read such information in the media as attempts are being made to get a pre-determined result in the case. Any further attempts to interfere and tampering in the investigations would be brought to the notice of the appropriate courts.”