People who supplied drugs to singer Noble identified, will be brought to justice: police

The singer has admitted to wrongdoings and promised to return to normal life, police say

Police have said they have identified the people who supplied drugs to Mainul Ahsan Noble, the singer now in custody on charges of embezzling funds from a gig at a school in Shariatpur. 

The artist admitted to wrongdoings and promised to return to normal life, said Harunor Rashid, an additional commissioner at Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Detective Branch.

“He named the people through which he became addicted to drugs, for which he can’t maintain programme schedules or can’t perform onstage due to the influence of drugs. He has admitted doing these during his remand,” Harunor said at a press conference on Sunday. 

The police officer declined to name those who supplied drugs to Noble. “He is an artist. He has many agents. He also collects drugs himself. He is an addict.” 

“We’ll conduct an operation to catch them and take legal action against them.”

Harun said Noble asked for several months to quit drugs. 

“He admitted to not attending concerts after taking money, assaulting his wife and oher wrongdoings. He is repentful now. He wants to live with his family,” Harun said. 

“The two families are trying to settle the issues. Noble told us he will stop doing things that destroy peace in the family and try to keep his words.” 

After his arrest on Saturday, a Dhaka court granted police one day to quiz him in custody in a case over the gig in Shariatpur.

Noble signed a contract promising to perform at a reunion at Shariatpur’s Bhedarganj Headquarter Pilot Government High School, organised by the students of the SSC 2016 batch on Apr 28. The singer took an advance payment of Tk 172,000 in several phases from the organisers, but he did not show up at the event, putting the organisers in trouble, according to the case dossier.​​    

Noble stirred controversies several times before. 

Earlier on Apr 26, Noble made headlines when a disgruntled audience hurled shoes and water bottles at him during a performance where he went out of control, marring the golden jubilee event of a college in the northern district of Kurigram. 

Noble, who shot to fame in 2018 and 2019 through the Indian musical reality TV show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, behaved erratically and tried to break the microphone stand on stage during his performance at the golden jubilee programme at Fulbari Degree College earlier on Apr 26. A video clip of the incident went viral on social media afterwards. 

After a flurry of posts trolling rock star Faruq Mahfuz Anam James, Noble said his Facebook account was “hacked” into in 2021. 

In 2020, the Indian police recorded a complaint against Noble on charges of making humiliating remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media.