Court orders three chargesheets in Provogue drug case

Mumbai, Aug 3 (UNI) The special NDPS court today directed the prosecution to file three different chargesheets against nine accused, including Provogue apparel MD Salil Chaturvedi, in the case of alleged possession of cocaine and conspiring to supply drugs.

In an application last month, Chaturvedi had sought the court's permission to separate his case from the common chargesheet filed by the prosecution on September five last year against him and eight others, under various sections of Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

Additional Sessions Judge B S Waselkar today ordered for filing of three separate chargesheets in the case, since there are three groups of accused. The court also gave the prosecution time till August 17 to challenge this court's order before High Court, or else file three separate chargesheets.

Accordingly, the accused - Allywin Sequeira, Joe Sequeira, Sanjay Shinde, Shantilal Jadhav and Vishal Manghani will be in one group, second group will comprise three foreign nationals --Sako Hashim, Lukanga and Udaije and Chaturvedi will be covered under a third chargesheet.

The Provogue managing director was arrested on August two last year for the alleged possession of three gram cocaine powder and conspiring to supply drugs. He was granted bail on September six on the ground that the police did not seem to have any evidence against him, other than the cocaine seized from his house.

Police had also seized three vials of cocaine at the Santa Cruz airport, being smuggled in from Chennai, and had arrested Allywin Sequeira, who was the alleged importer of the consignment. During investigation, Sequeira revealed that the original consignee of the vials was Vishal Meghnani, a former employee of Provogue who was nabbed on July 26.

Salil was arrested on the basis of the statement Menghani had made during the investigation period.

Suresh Shinde and Shantilal Jadhav are the police officials arrested in the case, who allegedly tried to replace the seized cocaine with boric powder.

Barring the three foreign nationals, all the others have obtained bail in the case.

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