Photo: Collected
Bollywood actress Nora Fatehi just cannot seem to escape Sukesh Chandrashekar’s Rs 200 crore financial fraud case. She has once again been summoned by the court in this long-running, high-profile case.
Nora has been asked to appear before Delhi’s Rouse Avenue court on 2 November. She has to go to court because she is named as a witness in the case’s third chargesheet.
Sukesh has caused no small stir in Bollywood over the Rs 200 crore fraud allegations. Nora has been questioned several times before over allegations that she accepted expensive gifts from the accused. This time, however, she has been ordered to appear in court as a prosecution witness.
Sukesh claims he gave Nora several crore rupees to buy a house in Casablanca, Morocco. The accused has also claimed he gave her various gifts, including expensive cosmetics, foreign-brand bags and a luxury car. Sukesh had at one point also made public parts of his WhatsApp conversations with Nora.
The Nora-Sukesh controversy began quite some time ago, however. Sukesh had claimed that Nora provoked him in various ways to break off his relationship with Jacqueline Fernandez. He further alleged that, jealous of his relationship with Jacqueline, Nora called him regularly and also asked for huge sums of money to fund a lavish lifestyle. These are all, however, Sukesh’s allegations; their truth has yet to be proved in court.
The matter came back into discussion last August when a handwritten letter by Sukesh spread on social media. In that letter too, he wrote of various allegations against Nora.
Another Bollywood actress, Jacqueline Fernandez, whose name is also linked to the same case, has likewise been in legal trouble for a long time. She too has had to appear in court several times and has been questioned by the investigating agency.
Nora had said earlier that being linked to Sukesh had done great damage to her professional life. In a statement last August, she claimed she had lost work with several advertisers and companies because of the case. She had to go through a hard time as she lost one job after another. The actress also said she had to bear the effects of this situation for nearly two years.
Background
According to a report in The Week of 15 September 2022, Nora Fatehi appeared before the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police that day in a case linked to Sukesh Chandrashekar; it was her second summons, and the first time, on 2 September, she was questioned for six to seven hours.
A report in The Tribune of 2 December 2022 says Nora went to the office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in New Delhi that day to give a fresh statement. In her earlier statement she had said she was given a gift bag and a phone at an event in Chennai in December 2020, and that the BMW car was given to her brother-in-law.
Sources
Original report: Bangladesh Pratidin
Background sources: The Week, 15 September 2022; The Tribune, 2 December 2022
