Lagatar24 Desk
Mumbai, Nov.20: The Bombay High Court issued Aryan Khan’s comprehensive bail order in the Mumbai cruise drugs case on Saturday. The high court stated in its ruling that Aryan Khan was “not discovered in possession of any undesirable material” and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy between him, Arbaaz Merchant, and Munmun Dhamecha, the other defendant in the case.
Aryan Khan, Shah Rukh Khan’s son, was one of 20 individuals arrested after a Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) search on a Mumbai cruise on October 2. On October 3, Aryan Khan was apprehended. He was legally detained afterwards, but after three weeks in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail, he was granted bail.
In Aryan Khan’s bail order, the Bombay High Court stated that WhatsApp communications recovered on his phone do not show any connection between the “three applicants with other co-accused on the allegation of conspiracy.”
“Aryan is concerned, but for irrelevant WhatsApp chats noticed in his mobile, there is no material evidence to connect all these three applicants with other co-accused on the issue of conspiracy,” the order issued by the Bombay High Court said.
“After having gone through the WhatsApp chats extracted from Applicant/Accused no. 1’s [Aryan Khan] phone, nothing objectionable could be noticed to suggest that applicant nos. 1 & 2 [Arbaaz and Munmun Dhamecha] or all three applicants alongwith other accused persons in agreement have meeting of minds and have hatched conspiracy committing the offence in question,” the court order read.
“There is hardly any positive evidence on record to convince this court that all the accused persons with common intention agreed to commit unlawful act,” the court order said.
The Bombay High Court also noted that “the applicants were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether at the relevant time, they had consumed drugs.”
“There is hardly any positive evidence on record to convince this court that all the accused persons with common intention agreed to commit unlawful act,” the court order said.
The Bombay High Court also noted that “the applicants were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether at the relevant time, they had consumed drugs.”
On the NCB’s argument that the accused had admitted committing the crime, the court said, “However, in view of submissions made by Mr Singh, [NCB’s lawyer] it is worth to clarify here that such confessional statements can be considered by the investigating agency only for the investigation purpose and cannot be used as a tool for drawing an inference that applicants have committed an offence under the NDPS Act as has been alleged against them.”
“Merely because of applicants were travelling on the cruise, that by itself cannot be termed as a satisfying foundation for invoking provisions of Section 29 against the applicants,” the court order said.
The Bombay High Court concluded by saying that “…it is difficult to infer that applicants are involved in an offence of commercial quantity [of drugs]. As such, parameters laid down under Section 37 of the NDPS act will be of hardly any consequence while considering the prayer for grant of bail of the applicants.”
