NEW DELHI, Oct 28: The Bombay High Court on Thursday finally granted bail to Aryan Khan, the 23 year old son of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, and two other co-accused three weeks after they were held in the drugs-on-cruise-ship case on October 3.
Besides Aryan Khan two others to be granted bail by a single judge bench of Justice N W Sambre were Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha. “All three pleas are allowed. I will pass detailed orders by tomorrow evening,” Justice Sambre said. The accused, however, will not be released from jail till the written order was received from the court which is unlikely before Friday evening or Saturday. The High Court was hearing the bail pleas for the last three days after the local court rejected their bail applications on the Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) request.
Opposing Aryan’s bail plea during the HC hearing, the NCB counsel ASG Anil Singh had said applicant Aryan Khan was not a first-hand consumer but a regular consumer of drugs for the last two years. He also pointed out that Aryan was found in ‘conscious possession’ of contraband. “There is a case that a person might not have consumed the drug, but if he’s in possession of it, he can be booked under NDPS Act… Accused Aryan was found in conscious possession of contraband,” Singh had argued.
On Wednesday, Senior Advocate Amit Desai, representing co-accused and Aryan’s friend Arbaaz Merchant, who the NCB had claimed was possessing drugs, had argued before the court that the NCB’s arrests in the case were “illegal” because the agency failed to follow procedure under section 41A of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which mandates the investigating officer to issue notice of appearance prior to arrest. Desai also contended that WhatsApp chats were not admissible in court, according to previous High Court judgments and provisions of the Indian Evidence Act.
Senior advocate and former attorney general of India Mukul Rohatgi, appearing on behalf of Aryan, had concluded his arguments on Tuesday. Rohatgi called his arrest “arbitrary”, adding that the NCB had made no recovery from the 23-year-old, nor conducted a medical examination to show consumption of any narcotic.
Following the court’s order, the fans of the Bollywood actor celebrated in front of Mannat, Shah Rukh Khan’s residence.
Aryan Khan and others were arrested on a raid conducted by the NCB off the Mumbai coast on an alleged rave party on the Goa-bound Cordelia Cruise and detained around 14 persons on October 2. The ship was brought back to Mumbai and eight of the 14 including Aryan Khan, were placed under arrest the next day and were remanded to NCB custody till October 7. Later they were sent to judicial custody for 14 days. The case snowballed into a political storm with allegations of irregularities, extortions being added to it, particularly because of the involvement of the son of the Bollywood star.
(Manas Dasgupta)
