Supreme Court objects to Centre's plea challenging Bombay high court order granting bail to Rhea Chakraborty

The Supreme Court has objected to the Central government and Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) filing a petition against the observations of the Bombay high court in the bail order for actress Rhea Chakraborty. Hearing the petition, the chief justice of India, SA Bobde, with a bench including justice AS Bopanna and justice V Ramasubramaniam, observed that petitions cannot be filed objecting to observations in a bail order. 

Legal website LiveLaw.in stated that solicitor general Tushar Mehta claimed that the bail order was not being challenged in the petition. Rather, he said, it was the ''wide-ranging observations'' made by the Bombay high court that were being challenged. 

Responding to this, the bench headed by Bobde, said, "We find the new things you do very difficult to understand. You cannot file a petition challenging the observations. You can only challenge the order."

This observation prompted the solicitor general to request time from the bench to amend the petition to challenge the bail order. The bench has now posted the matter to next week. 

The petition against the bail order was filed by the Central government, through the NCB, before the apex court on 16 March. The Bombay high court granted Chakraborty bail, on the bond of Rs1 lakh, in October 2020. 

In its observation, the high court had noted, "simply providing money for a particular transaction or other transactions will not be the financing of that activity."

The NCB had charged Chakraborty under section 27A of the NDPS (Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropics Substances) Act, which claimed that she was financing the illicit trade of drugs and harbouring offenders on the basis of her monetary support of the late Sushant Singh Rajput. 

The NCB has also moved high court on 17 March seeking cancellation of bail granted to Chakraborty's brother, Showik, in the same case.