Chrisann Pereira Sharjah drugs planting case: Baker who framed actor granted bail by Bombay HC
The Bombay High Court observed that the quantity of drugs involved in the Chrisann Pereira Sharjah drugs planting case was small as it granted bail to Anthony Paul and his co-accused Rajesh Bobhate.
3 min read
Mumbai-based baker Anthony Paul (left) and actor Chrisann Pereira (right). (File Photo)The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to a Mumbai-based baker jailed for allegedly planting drugs on actor Chrisann Pereira, leading to her arrest in Sharjah last year.
The baker, Anthony Paul, was arrested in Mumbai last year, and he has spent nearly one-and-a-half years in jail. The high court also granted bail to the baker’s co-accused Rajesh Bobhate, observing that the quantity of drugs involved in the case was small and no purpose would be served by keeping them in jail.
“In the present case, chargesheet is already filed. The applicants have suffered incarceration for about one year and five months. Even as per the material available on record, only small quantity of ganja is involved. In such a situation, no purpose would be served by continuing the custody of the applicants, and therefore, a case is made out for enlarging the applicants on bail,” Justice Manish Pitale said in the order.
Pereira, an actor based in Mumbai, was contacted in March 2023 by a person who identified himself as Ravi and offered a role in a web series. She was requested to travel to the UAE for an audition. Accordingly, on April 1, 2023, Pereira travelled to Sharjah. Before her travel, the person had given her a trophy to deliver in which drugs were concealed, leading to her arrest there. She then spent nearly a month in jail before Indian authorities probed and found out that she was framed allegedly by Paul as revenge over a petty dispute with her mother earlier.
In October 2023, a special court rejected bail for Paul, considering the trauma experienced by Pereira and Mumbai police submissions. The police had said that there were four other victims who were framed by Paul, including a DJ named Clayton Rodrigues, who was sentenced to 25 years in jail in Sharjah after being found in possession of a drug-laced cake. A month later, the court dropped a stringent charge from the case, observing that there was no material for it.
In the bail applications filed before the high court, counsels Aruna Pai and Ayaz Khan, appearing for Paul, and lawyer Shailesh Kharat for Bobhate stated that given that the quantity of ganja, alleged to have been recovered from the trophy is small, the duo faced a maximum of three years in jail. They also submitted that the duo had already spent one year and five months in jail with the trial yet to begin.
You May Like
