MUMBAI, April 26 -- A special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) court in Mumbai has held that the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) failed to comply with a mandatory statutory safeguard while freezing four bank accounts linked to actor Rhea Chakraborty and her family, and ordered that the accounts be unfrozen and permitted to be operated. The freeze happened in 2020 during the investigation into the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput, in which a murder and drug angle was brought in. Chakraborty, Singh's ex-girlfriend, was implicated but received a clean chit from the CBI last year. In a set of four orders passed on Saturday, the court found that the agency did not secure confirmation of the freezing action from the competent authority within the time prescribed under the NDPS Act, rendering the restraint legally unsustainable. Allowing the applications filed by Rhea, her brother Showik and her mother Sandhya, the court held that the statutory framework places clear limits on the power to freeze property, and those safeguards had not been followed in the present case. Holding this lapse to be fatal, the court added that in the absence of the statutorily required order, "the application is liable to be allowed", and directed that the accounts be unfrozen and permitted to be operated in accordance with RBI rules. In reaching this conclusion, the court relied on a Bombay high court ruling emphasising that the power to freeze property is not unregulated and must be exercised in line with constitutional protections. The proceedings arise out of the NCB's high-profile drug investigation launched in 2020 after the death of Sushant Singh Rajput. Chakraborty and several others were later arraigned in the NDPS case, with the agency filing a chargesheet alleging a broader conspiracy....