Manhattan hotelier Vikram Chatwal was an overnight guest in a Florida jail this week after cops allegedly found him with illegal drugs at an airport checkpoint.
Police say Chatwal, a good pal of trouble magnet Lindsay Lohan, was packing heroin, cocaine, ketamine, pot and an assortment of powerful pills when “behavior detection officers” flagged him for a search at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Tuesday.
Security found more than a dozen loose white pills in his carry-on bag and a packet of cocaine in his jacket pocket and arrested Chatwal on the spot, a police report from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office states.
Investigators later found a clear baggie in the crotch of Chatwal’s pants that contained 6 grams of heroin, a half a gram of ketamine and 3.5 grams of marijuana, the report states.
The pills included the sedatives Lorazepam and Xanax.
“The arrestee provided a post-Miranda statement to narcotics detectives wherein he admitted possessing and purchasing the (drugs) illegally,” the police report says.
Chatwal, whose properties include the Dream Hotels, was charged with eight drug counts, including felony trafficking because of the size of the heroin stash.
The Sikh impresario of New York nightlife faces a minimum three-year jail sentence if convicted of the most serious charge.
It was at Chatwal’s Manhattan Dream Hotel in Chelsea that Lohan allegedly clipped a chef with her Porsche last September.
She was charged with leaving the scene of an accident, but prosecutors rejected the case.
Chatwal, 41, was released from jail Wednesday after posting bail, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said.
Friends told The News that the multimillionaire playboy needs serious help.
“Vikram needs to get himself into rehab,” one source said. “He has a real substance abuse problem.”
A rep for Chatwal in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The scion of a wealthy hotel family, Chatwal previously entered rehab in Mumbai for treatment of alcoholism, the Bangalore Mirror reported in 2010.
Lohan and Chatwal were spotted shopping together in SoHo in January, the same weekend her criminal lawyer claimed she was laid up with the flu and too ill to travel for a California court date.
She took a last-minute flight to make the appearance after the photos — which showed her smoking — raised questions about her condition.
