With no respite for him in the mid-sea drug bust case, a Mumbai Magistrate Court on Thursday remanded Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan and seven others to judicial custody for 14 days, even as the ruling Congress joined the NCP in accusing the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) of colluding with the BJP in “handling” the suspects in the sensational case.
After rejecting the NCB’s plea for extending the custody of the eight accused till October 11 and transferring the further hearing of the case to the Special NDPS Court, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate RM Nerlikar remanded Aryan and seven other accused in 14 days’ judicial custody.
A city court will hear Aryan’s bail plea at 11 am on Friday, by then the NCB has been asked to file its say on the bail application. The court asked the NCB to let Aryan stay in its office on Thursday before he is moved to a jail on Friday after being produced at
the court hearing his
bail application.
The NCB has so far arrested 17 persons, including Aryan, in connection with the busting of a rave party at which it seized 13 grams of cocaine, 5 grams of MD (mephedrone), 21 grams of charas, 22 pills of MDMA (ecstasy) and `1.33 lakh in cash from Goa-bound Cordelia Cruises’ Empress ship, off the Mumbai coast here
Meanwhile, a day after Maharashtra Minority Affairs Minister and NCP’s chief spokesperson Nawab Malik alleged that two private persons, including a BJP worker, had been hauling up suspects, Aryan and Arbaaz Merchant, Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant charged that the NCB had “flouted” the rules of the NDPS Act while conducting the raid on a luxury ship on October 2, and demanded action against the agency officials.
Sawant said while the NCB’s own handbook stated that any accused who has to be shifted or handed over to another officer after arrest, it could have done only with the written and signed consent of a senior officer, he wanted to know how did a “private person” hand over the accused to the NCB?
“In the NCB raids on October 2, the rules of the NDPS Act have been blatantly violated. How did a private person who is a BJP activist hand over the accused. The entire raid and busting the so-called rave party on the cruise ship are suspicious,” Sawant said.
Sawant accused the NCB officers of suppressing the truth by calling the BJP activists Manish Bhanushali and Kiran P Gosavi as “independent witnesses”, when the Bhanushali - who is linked to the BJP-- had admitted he was merely an “informer” of the agency.
“The NCB Mumbai officers should show the arrest details and the documents. The two persons (Bhanushali and Gosawi) who handed over the two high-profile suspects Aryan and his friend Arbaaz are BJP activists, who were compromising the security of the accused. How did they even click selfies with them (accused) that day?,” Sawant asked.
Maintaining that “these are extremely serious issues”, Sawant asked the NCB Director-General and Maha Vikas Aghadi Government to order an immediate probe in the matter. “As per the NDPS Act, any officer found guilty of violating the rule-book faces 10 years’ jail plus fine of at least Rs 100,000,” Sawant said.
Meanwhile, Malik shared a video that showed Gosavi and Bhanushali entering the NCB’s office the same night raids were conducted on the Mumbai cruise ship. Here’s the video of Kiran P Gosavi and Manish Bhanushali entering the NCB office the same night the cruise ship was raided,” Malik said, while sharing the video on twitter handle on Thursday.
Malik charged that the BJP had colluded with the NCB to defame Maharashtra and the Hindi film industry for the past one year. While Gosavi had claimed to be a “private detective”, Bhanushali has gone on record claiming that he was a BJP worker and admitted that he was with NCB officials at the Mumbai International Cruise Terminal during the raid. “The so-called NCB raid was fake,” he said.
