Rhea Chakraborty's lawyer Satish Maneshinde recently reacted to Supreme Court's judgment confessional statements made before investigating officers by those accused in drug abuse and trafficking cases under the narcotics law cannot be used to convict them. The court said, "this would amount to infringement of fundamental rights to life, equality, and protection against self-incrimination." Maneshinde, in a statement according to Times of India said, "The Judgement rendered by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in respect of Section 67 of the NDPS Act is a Landmark pronouncement. A large number of people have been incarcerated and punished on the basis of statements forcibly extracted by using third degree, coercion and threats to innocent individuals violating their Fundamental Rights in the last 35 years."
He also addressed the drugs angle in Sushant Singh Rajput's case and said, "Even in the case of all accused in the SSR Drugs Angle case, there’s hardly any recovery and independent evidence to charge them of serious offences. They are languishing in custody on the basis of inadmissible statements. In view of this Judgement rendered by Justice Rohington Nariman and Navin Sinha a large number of accused will see the light of the day. Rhea Chakraborty’s case has lost total steam in the merits of the allegations by virtue of this Judgement."For the uninformed, the Court in its ruling said that Section 25 of the Evidence Act says "no confession made to a police officer, shall be proved as against a person accused of any offence. That a statement recorded under section 67 of the NDPS Act cannot be used as a confessional statement in the trial of an offence under the NDPS Act." Rhea was arrested in September and was released on bail after 28 days . Other actors such as Deepika Padukone, Sara Ali Khan, Shraddha Kapoor, and Rakul Preet Singh were also called in for questioning.