Star Dust and Drug Busts

Party drugs are not uncommon in Bollywood, nor are high profile arrests. What is new is a desire to ensure a more egalitarian and nationalistic film industry that sells a fresh narrative to the world.

- KAVEREE BAMZAI

Her eyes are glazed. Her manner distracted. Her bank accounts are frozen. She is in therapy. Her father, a doctor, can’t find a job. One month in Mumbai’s Byculla Jail on charges of supplying drugs to Sushant Singh Rajput has reduced her to a shadow of her once-ebullient self. That’s what prison can do to people.

Actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son, Aryan, with time at Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai, has promised to make the Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) Sameer Wankhede proud of him once he gets out. His script may play out differently from Rhea. Already director Ram Gopal Varma has predicted that he will become a super-duper star, though so far the young man has shown no interest in an acting career, and the talk so far has been of writing or directing.

But beyond the individual impact, Aryan’s arrest has forever blown the lid off Bollywood’s biggest open secret, the widespread use of party drugs.

It is something IRS officer Wankhede has been tracking since last year when news broke of the late actor Rajput’s rumoured drug use during the investigation of his death. The Enforcement Directorate called in the NCB and they tracked celebrity WhatsApp chats to question several actors such as Deepika Padukone, Shraddha Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, and Rakul Preet Singh, as well as many associates of Rajput. Several others have been picked up in the ongoing investigation, including actor Armaan Kohli, comedienne Bharti Singh, and the brother of actor Arjun Rampal’s partner Gabriella Demetriades. Rampal, along with his model wife Mehr Jesia, was once a member of Shah Rukh and Gauri Khan’s exclusive party set.