A court in Mumbai has said that the Narcotics Control Bureau claimed that Aachit Kumar, arrested in the Aryan Khan drug case, supplied drugs, but that the agency could not produce enough evidence to support its, reported The Indian Express on Monday. The court granted bail to Kumar and eight other accused persons in the case.
“Except WhatsApp chats with accused no. 1 [Aryan Khan], there is no other evidence to show that the applicant was indulging in such activity,” Special Judge VV Patil of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act court observed. “Merely on the basis of WhatsApp chats, it cannot be gathered that applicant used to supply contraband to accused nos. 1 & 2 [Arbaaz Merchant].”
In its order published on Sunday, the court noted that actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan, with whom Kumar’s WhatsApp chats were provided as evidence, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court.
Khan was released from jail on October 30, two days after getting bail.
The actor’s son and and many others were detained by the Narcotics Control Bureau after a raid on a cruise ship off the coast of Mumbai on October 2. During the raid, the agency had claimed to have seized 13 grams of cocaine, 5 grams of mephedrone, 21 grams of charas, 22 pills of MDMA (ecstasy) and Rs 1.3 lakh from the ship.
Patil is the same judge who had denied Khan bail in the case. In its October 20 verdict, the judge had referred to Khan’s WhatsApp chats and said they showed that he was involved in “illicit drug activities for narcotic substances on [a] regular basis”.
The judge had also said that accused persons in the case had acted in a conspiracy with each other.
In its Sunday order, the court, however, noted that there was no evidence to show that they were a part of a conspiracy as claimed by the Narcotics Control Bureau.
“So far as the submissions of Special Public Prosecutor Advait Sethna regarding conspiracy are concerned, the aspect of proving the conspiracy which deals with depth is required to be considered only at the time of trial,” he said, according to India Today. “But prima-facie it needs to be shown by the NCB that there is a case of conspiracy and abatement.”
On four accused persons related to event management company Caneplus Trading, which had organised live shows on the ship that was raided, the judge said the Narcotics Control Bureau did not show anything on record that they had financed or harboured any offenders on the ship.
“It can be gathered that the applicant’s company was only involved in conducting live entertainment shows and live music shows on the Cruise and did not have authority to either regulate entry on board or assign the rooms,” the order stated “It can be gathered that they had no control over the Cruise and the passengers therein.”
The court also noted that no one from the Cordelia cruise team and sponsors were accused in the case.
With this order, 14 of the 20 accused persons in the case have been granted bail, reported Bar and Bench. They are Khan, Merchant, Kumar, Munmun Dhamecha, Gomit Chopra, Nupur Satija, Ishmeet Singh, Gopal Anand, Samir Saigal, Manav Singhal, Bhaskar Arora, Shreyas Nair, Manish Rajgariya and Avin Sahu.
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