While a division bench of Justice S S Shinde and Justice M S Karnik was to hear the sisters' plea on Wednesday, the same could not be done due to paucity of time.Priyanka Singh and Meetu Singh, sisters of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, on Tuesday denied allegations made by actor Rhea Chakraborty in her complaint against them before the Bombay High Court while seeking quashing of the FIR lodged against them.
Facing probe by central agencies in connection with Sushant’s death on June 14, Rhea had on September 7 filed a complaint at Bandra police station against Priyanka, Meetu and a doctor from Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, accusing them of getting the late actor psychiatric drugs without consultation and by using a forged prescription.
The sisters, in their rejoinder filed through advocate Madhav Thorat, said that if the state government, through the Mumbai Police, would not have been in a rush to make out a false case against them, a preliminary inquiry would have been conducted and the FIR against them would not have been registered.
“The FIR has been lodged maliciously with an ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance and with a view to spite and harass the petitioners due to private and personal grudge and as such, the instant FIR is an abuse of process of law,” the rejoinder stated.
It added, “Respondent Rhea, in an attempt to harass the petitioners has concocted a false, inaccurate and malicious complaint based on unsubstantiated facts pertaining to June 8, 2020, which is contrary to the facts placed before the Supreme Court by herself, press statements released earlier and interviews given to several news channels.”
The sisters further objected to Rhea’s allegation that Sushant’s brother-in-law O P Singh – an IPS officer who is married to Meetu – wanted to smear his image and described the same as “unfounded”, “scurrilous” and “baseless”.
They also refuted allegations that medicines prescribed appear in list of psychotropic substances as per the NDPS Act. “There is not even a single allegation in complaint or reply by Rhea that any such alleged drug was actually administered to Sushant Singh Rajput. Further, the drugs that have sought to be allegedly given by Dr Tarun Kumar are not banned drugs, in fact a notification was issued in April, this year, which clearly permits the prescription of such medicine through telemedicine.”
While a division bench of Justice S S Shinde and Justice M S Karnik was to hear the sisters’ plea on Wednesday, the same could not be done due to paucity of time.