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At a time when the noose is tightening on actress Rhea Chakraborty in a much-talked-about drugs case, controversial Bollywood actress Mamta Kulkarni, wife of narco kingpin Vicky Goswami, is seeking a clean chit in a Rs 2000-crore international drug cartel scandal. Kulkarni has been named a co-accused along with Nairobi-based drug lord Goswami, in a case registered by Thane police under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act which relates to the manufacturing of drugs such as ephedrine and mandrax.
Last week, a division bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Justice Rohinton F. Nariman and Justice Navin Sinha directed the Bombay High Court to expeditiously take up the case of actress Kulkarni, who had filed a petition for quashing of an FIR registered against her. She had been living in Nairobi with Goswami, who was arrested and extradited to the US by its Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA). Last year, the DEA filed a report in Southern District Court of New York on July 25 in which it mentioned the name of Dawood Ibrahim aide Vicky Goswami, husband of Bollywood actress Mamta Kulkarni and Ali Punjani, the ex-husband of another Bollywood star Kim Sharma.
Sources said that Vicky Goswami, a small-time bootlegger in Ahmedabad, introduced ‘mandrax’ to Bollywood parties in the 1990s. Once Dawood Ibrahim escaped to Karachi in 1993, the drug cartels in India’s crime and financial capital were handled by Goswami on behalf of the D-company. Gradually, heroin, cocaine, and curated marijuana were also being smuggled into the party circuit. Later, Goswami got close to Mamta Kulkarni and reportedly married her. The couple emigrated to South Africa and later to Kenya from where they remote-controlled the drug cartels in India.
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