Mumbai, Sept 9: Former Bollywood actress Mamta Kulkarni, an accused in a Rs 2,000 crore rcotics drugs case, on Friday denied all allegations against her, saying she was a “yogini” and “innocent”. “I am a yogini (ascetic). I am engaged in spirituality and it effects by activities since the past 20 years. I am innocent of the accusations against me,” Kulkarni, 44, said in a videotaped statement from Kenya’s Mombasa, where she is currently based.
Now, she has written to Exterl Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju demanding a probe against the Maharashtra Police to unearth the reasons behind dragging her me into the drugs case. “I have never engaged in any act contrary to the principles of Indian statutes and am a victim of high-handedness, crude, unprofessiol and unethical conspiracy by the officers of the US’s Drug Enforcement Administration and the Thane police,” she said in her plea to the two Union ministers. On Kulkarni’s behalf, her battery of legal advisors including Parzez Memon of MZM Legal, Daniel Arshack from New York, Cliff Ombeta from Kenya, Sudeep Pasbola and Majeed Memon, who is also a NCP Rajya Sabha member, were present at the media briefing. The lawyers contended that it was under the direct pressure, guidance and abetment of the DE, that the Thane police is hounding Kulkarni to implicate her without an iota of evidence against her in the case. Besides, they said one of the accused in the case, Jai Mukhi has already retracted his confession, while Memon said the evidence is so flimsy that the case would not even reach the trial stage as it fails to meet or concur with Indian standards of evidence.
The case first came into the limelight when Kulkarni’s me cropped up on June 18 in the Rs 2,000 crore ephedrine drugs haul case cracked by Thane police in which her husband and business partner Vicky Goswami is a co-accused.
The Thane police have also approached the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to get an InterPol Red Corner Notice issued against Kulkarni on the lines of a RCN against Goswami, to facilitate her deportation from Kenya. Police had said that Moroccan and Colombian drug dealers are also involved in the case and the DEA had provided pictures of Abdulla, an intertiol rcotics dealer from Kenya.
The case started in April with a series of drugs haul in Mumbai, Thane and Solapur and police also learnt that the Kulkarni-Goswami couple had attended meetings in January and April this year for drug smuggling and setting up a drugs factory in Mombasa. So far around eight persons have been arrested in the case and police are on the lookout for another four absconders in Maharashtra and Gujarat. The lawyers’ team accused police of resorting to all foul means in the investigations with a view to sensatiolise the highly exaggerated figure (Rs 2,000 crore), and are using her celebrity status to her disadvantage. (ians)