Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was in the news a few months back when NCB booked him in the drugs case. Now according to the reports, no evidence has been found that confirms that Aryan was a part of a larger drugs conspiracy or an international drugs trafficking syndicate. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), has found that there are several irregularities in the raid on the yacht Cordelia during which he was arrested.
Although contrary to the allegations of NCB’s Mumbai unit, SIT submitted some key findings. As reported by Hindustan Times, there was no need to take Aryan Khan’s phone and check his chats because he was never in possession of drugs; the chats do not suggest Khan was part of any international syndicate; the raid was not video-recorded, as required by the NCB manual; and the drugs recovered from several accused arrested in the case were shown as a single recovery.
To be sure, the SIT investigation is not finished, and it may be a few months before it submits its final report to NCB Director General S N Pradhan. According to one of the officers, a legal opinion will be obtained before making a final decision, particularly on whether Khan can be charged with consumption even though he was not carrying any drugs.
The SIT investigation appears to raise more concerns about the raid itself, as well as the conduct of the agency’s former Mumbai Zonal Unit director, Sameer Wankhede.
Wankhede, who has since been repatriated to his parent cadre, has been interviewed numerous times – both by the SIT and the agency’s vigilance team – in order to determine the truth of the case.
On the night of October 2, last year, Wankhede led a team of officers and witnesses to a cruise ship, Cordelia, at the International Cruise Terminal at Green Gate in Mumbai. From the cruise ships, NCB seized 13 grammes of cocaine, five grammes of mephedrone, 21 grammes of marijuana, 22 pills of MDMA (Ecstasy), and Rs 1.33 lakh in cash.
Significantly, the preliminary findings of the SIT investigation back up the observations of the Bombay High Court, which granted bail to Khan on October 28 last year while stating that “there was no evidence to suggest the existence of any conspiracy”, the officials said.
The procedural flaws are already being investigated by the agency in a separate vigilance investigation.
The agency intercepted 14 people from the cruise ship and placed Aryan Khan, 24, Arbaaz Merchant, 26, and Munmum Dhamecha, 28, under arrest on the afternoon of October 3. Following that, the agency arrested 17 more people in connection with the raid.
Wankhede’s team claimed the accused were part of a larger conspiracy based on WhatsApp chats. It was claimed that Aryan Khan was in contact with a foreign drug supplier and that the conversations were about “hard drugs” and “bulk quantities.”
However, in rejecting NCB’s claims, a single bench of Bombay high court justice Nitin W Sambre noted that there was no evidence to suggest the existence of any conspiracy.
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