Bengal tigress will fight back: Rhea's lawyer on her release

New Delhi: Rhea Chakraborty became the subject of a hate campaign because she was girlfriend of Sushant Singh Rajput, but the "Bengal tigress will fight back," her lawyer, Satish Manshinde, said on Thursday, hours after the 28-year-old actress got bail from the Bombay High Court.

"She will fight all those idiots. The shameless people who destroyed her image are lining up outside my office for my interview," Manshinde said, referring to a section of media that has been under scrutiny for its no-holds-barred coverage of the actor's death and its aftermath.

Rhea Chakraborty walked out of Mumbai's Byculla jail on Thursday after remaining there for nearly a month. The Narcotics Control Bureau which arrested her on September 9 in course of its investigation into the drugs angle in the case, had accused her of being "an active member of a drug syndicate".

In the order granting bail, the High Court flatly contradicted the agency's claims, saying she was not a part of a chain of drug dealers.

Noting that the charges did not mention the involvement of drugs in commercial quantity, the court said spending money in procuring drugs for Sushant Singh Rajput "do not mean that she had financed illicit traffic."

"Simply providing money for a particular transaction or other transactions will not be financing of that activity," the court said. "The judge found that the quantity (of drugs involved) was very less. It was not equivalent to the quantity that can be traded," Manshinde said. "I am grateful to the high court that the judge went through the entire material given to him," he added.

Asked about the vilification of Rhea Chakraborty, Manshinde said "corrupt journalists" were simply hunting for TRPs as no stories were coming during the coronavirus pandemic.