Aryan Khan: Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s son to remain in jail after drugs bust
Superstar’s son has been in jail for 10 days now
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Your support makes all the difference.Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan will remain in jail till at least 20 October in connection with a cruise ship drugs bust case.
Mr Khan and seven others were apprehended by India’s top drug enforcement agency, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), 10 days ago.
On 3 October, NCB officials dressed in plain clothes raided a luxury cruise ship in Mumbai city. At the time, the NCB said it recovered 13gm of cocaine, 21gm of charas (cannabis), 22 pills of MDMA and 5gm of mephedrone and Rs 130,000 (£1,260) in cash during the raid.
The hearing for Mr Khan’s bail plea — the third since his arrest — began on Wednesday and continued through Thursday. Sessions court judge VV Patil reserved his order on the 23-year-old’s plea, leaving him with no legal options for recourse till an order is passed next week.
Representing the NCB, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh referred to Mr Khan’s WhatsApp chats and alleged that he has been consuming drugs regularly for three years. The NCB has asked that Mr Khan remain in custody while they probe his alleged role in international drug trafficking.
The defence said that there was absolutely no way Mr Khan had ties to any foreign drug operations. His advocate Amit Desai added that the narcotics bureau did not provide any information about how its investigation might be impacted if Mr Khan was granted bail.
Mr Desai added that there were no messages or conversations on his client’s mobile phone about the cruise ship rave party. Further, he pointed out that no drugs were found on Mr Khan himself.
Several political leaders, journalists and Bollywood actors have come out in support of the Khans.
Shortly after the bail hearing, #AryanKhanBail began trending on Twitter as many condemned the decision to keep Mr Khan in jail.
Supreme Court advocate Karuna Nandy tweeted: “Bail hearings make clear that his blood tests were clean, only allegations based on straws like membership of a WhatsApp group. Either NCB made a mistake, is covering up, or this is a vendetta.”
Journalist Ankur Pathak wrote: “Happened to hear some of the NCB arguments in court today and good god, they honestly sound like a bunch of disgruntled housing society uncles who scold kids for making too much noise.”
Veteran actor and politician Shatrughan Sinha in an interview with The Indian Express said: “This time they have Aryan Khan to play with, because he is Shah Rukh Khan’s son and they’ve got a chance to settle scores with the actor.”
Mr Khan has played the voice over artist for Simba in The Lion King’s Indian version.
Aryan Khan is Shah Rukh Khan’s eldest son. The star has a 21-year-old daughter, Suhana Khan, and 8-year-old son AbRam Khan.
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