In a major setback to controversial Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officer Samir Wankhede, the Bombay High Court has dismissed the Narcotics Control Bureau’s claims on a conspiracy hatched by Bollywood’s famous actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan in the drug racket case. In a detailed bail order on Aryan Khan and his friends Arbaaz Merchant, the Bombay High Court said that there is no evidence that they have committed an offense under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
With the bail order, the Bombay High Court said, “No on-record positive evidence has been found to prove before the Court that all the accused persons agreed to commit the unlawful act with common intention. This court needs to be sensitive to the fact that there should be basic material in the form of evidence to prove the case of conspiracy against the applicants.”
The High Court further said that on behalf of the prosecution, it has been said that the accused have confessed to committing an offense under the NDPS Act. Even if this is accepted, the maximum punishment in this case is one year. The accused are already in jail for about 25 days. The accused were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether at the relevant time, they had consumed drugs.
The court said in its order said, “after having gone through the Whatsapp chats extracted from (Aryan Khan’s) phone, nothing objectionable could be noticed to suggest that – he and Arbaaz – or all three applicants along with other accused persons in agreement have meeting of minds and have hatched conspiracy committing the offence in question.”
Let us tell you that Aryan Khan was arrested along with seven others from a cruise ship bound for Goa on October 3. He had to spend several weeks in Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail after he was accused of drug abuse by the NCB. However, Aryan’s lawyers argued that nothing was found from him, with the NCB citing WhatsApp chats to seek a case against him.
Significantly, Sameer Wankhede had to face serious charges of extortion as Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik made several revelations on him. Later, Maharashtra Police arrested NCB’s independent witness KP Gosavi. Gosavi is the same person whose selfie with Aryan Khan went viral on social media.
It is noteworthy that Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness of NCB in the Aryan Khan arrest case, had alleged in a five-page affidavit that Gosavi had paid Rs 25 crore from Aryan Khan’s arrest and Rs 8 crore to Wankhede. I spoke. He had also alleged that Gosavi had made him sign on blank pages at many places.