MUMBAI: The NCB questioned actress Rhea Chakraborty for around eight hours on Monday, the second consecutive day of her interrogation, and said it was getting "her cooperation" in the drugs case probe linked to the death of her live-in partner and actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
The 28-year-old arrived at the agency's office in Ballard Estate around 9:30 AM and left around 6 PM.
Dressed in a pink hooded jacket and carrying a bag, Rhea was escorted by police personnel.
She was questioned for about six hours by the agency for the first time in this case on Sunday.
She will be questioned again on Tuesday.
"She came yesterday, she came today. We talked to her all day, questioned her. So, I cannot say she is not cooperating. She will come tomorrow too. So we are getting her cooperation," NCB deputy director general (DDG) (south-west region) Mutha Ashok Jain told reporters after the questioning session.
He said the agency was doing a "professionally thorough and systematic job" and it will inform the court about its "findings in detail" in this case.
The agency has said it wants to question Rhea and confront her with her younger brother Showik Chakraborty (24), Rajput's house manager Samuel Miranda (33) and his house staffer Dipesh Sawant to ascertain their roles in this alleged drug racket after it obtained mobile phone chat records and other electronic data that suggested some banned drugs were allegedly procured by these people.
The NCB had arrested the three men in this case last week.
Officials said Rhea was questioned on these lines on both the days.
She was earlier questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that are probing different angles surrounding the death of Rajput.
Rhea, in interviews given to multiple TV news channels, has said she has never consumed drugs herself.
She had, however, claimed that Rajput used to consume marijuana.
The NCB, meanwhile, has arrested another man, identified as Anuj Keshvani, in the case.
The agency said his name came up during the interrogation of Kaizan Ebrahim who was arrested by it in this case earlier.
Ebrahim is currently out on bail.
Keshvani has been taken for a COVID-19 test and will be produced before a court for custody through videoconferencing at 7:30 PM on Monday, DDG Jain said.
The agency had said it had seized drugs like hashish, "commercial quantity" of LSD and marijuana and cash after raids were conducted against Keshvani on Sunday.
A total of nine people have been arrested till now by the NCB with seven directly linked to this probe, while two were arrested when investigation was launched under criminal sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
When the probe in the case began, the agency had arrested two men, Abbas Lakhani and Karan Arora, for alleged drug peddling and officials have claimed that through them they reached Zaid Vilatra and Abdel Basit Parihar, who are allegedly linked to this drugs case as they were in touch with Miranda.
It is claimed that Miranda told NCB investigators that he used to procure bud or curated marijuana for Rajput's household.
Miranda, they had said, used to allegedly procure drugs from them on the purported instructions of Showik, agency officials said.
Both Lakhani and Arora have been granted bail.
The NCB had said it recovered 59 grams of cannabis from them.
On reports that some of the accused had contracted COVID-19, Jain said, "It is not at all in my knowledge. We are getting them tested as per protocol laid down by the honourable court and if anyone tests positive (for coronavirus) we will take take all precautions as per the laid down down norms."
He also said "no one" from Bengaluru has been summoned in the case till now.
The NCB, while seeking remand of one of the accused in this case last week, had told a local court that it was looking into the "drug citadel in Mumbai, and especially Bollywood" in this probe.
This case has given the NCB an "inkling" into the narcotics network and its penetration in Bollywood or the Hindi film industry, DDG Jain had told reporters last week.
The NCB probe began after the ED shared with it a report following the cloning of two mobile phones of Rhea that suggested talks about procurement, transaction and consumption of banned drugs.
Rajput, 34, was found dead at his flat in the suburban Bandra area on June 14.