Rhea Chakraborty and her brother at the Enforcement Directorate office in Mumbai today
Actor Rhea Chakraborty and her family members arrived at the Enforcement Directorate's office in Mumbai at 11 am today for questioning in an alleged money laundering case linked to the death of her friend and actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
The Enforcement Directorate or ED's probe focuses on Ms Chakraborty's income, investments, business and professional deals. Mr Rajput's family in Bihar had filed a police complaint alleging Ms Chakraborty illegally transferred Rs 15 crore in tranches from his son's account and drove him to suicide.
A property in Mumbai's Khar neighbourhood and another in Navi Mumbai, both linked to Ms Chakraborty, are under the ED's lens, news agency Press Trust of India reported. The ED wants more answers from Ms Chakraborty over alleged mismatch between her income, expenditure and investments, PTI reported quoting unnamed ED officials.
Others from Ms Chakraborty's family who turned up for questioning today are her brother Showik and father Indrajit Chakraborty. Shruti Modi, the business manager of Ms Chakraborty and Mr Rajput, is also at the ED's office. Mr Rajput's roommate Siddharth Pithani arrived at the ED office around 2:35 pm.
All the four were questioned by the ED on August 7. Showik has already been questioned for 22 hours - he left the ED office at 6.30 am on Sunday after arriving at noon the previous day and spending the night at the probe agency's office.
Ms Chakraborty's lawyer Satish Maneshinde has said she will cooperate with the probe. The actor has asked the Supreme Court to transfer the case against her from Patna to Mumbai, a request that Mr Rajput's family is working to deny. Mr Rajput's father has said transfer of case can happen in trial stage and not when investigation is going on.
The ED is learnt to have shown Ms Chakraborty, her brother and her business manager some bank statements that show transfer of small amounts into Showik's accounts from those of Mr Rajput and Ms Chakraborty, PTI reported.
While the ED is looking into the alleged money laundering angle, the CBI has taken over the probe into the death of the actor.
Mr Rajput created two companies with Ms Chakraborty and her brother as directors, the Bihar Police have said. The registered addresses of the two firms are a flat in Raigad's Ulwe town in Maharashtra, owned by Ms Chakraborty's father, investigators have said.
With inputs from PTI