While granting bail to the 23-year-old Aryan Khan, son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, in the drug racket case busted on a cruise in October, the Bombay High Court has said: “The court prima facie has not noticed any positive evidence against Aryan Khan and two others.”
A single Bench of Justice Nitin Sambre had granted bail to Mr. Khan, and co-accused Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha, on October 28. The detailed order for this was made available on Saturday.
The Bench stated in the order: “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. There is no material evidence to connect all these three Applicants with other co-accused on the issue of conspiracy.”
The Bench went on to say: “Rather the investigation carried out till this date suggests that Mr Khan and Mr Merchant were travelling independent of Ms Dhamecha and there was no meeting of minds on the aforesaid issue. So as to infer the case of conspiracy against the Applicants also, there is absence of material on record of them having such meeting of minds with other Accused who were named in the offence in question.”
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The court stated, “This Court is of the opinion that the claim put forth by the Narcotic Control Bureau that the accused should be considered to have intention to commit an offence under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, having found in possession of commercial quantity, in the backdrop of case of hatching conspiracy is liable to be rejected.”
The court also took note of the fact that the accused were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether they had consumed drugs at the relevant time.
On October 2, the Central agency seized 13 gm of cocaine, 5 gm of MD (mephedrone), 21 gm of charas, 22 pills of MDMA (‘Ecstasy’), and ₹1,33,000 cash at the International Cruise Terminal, Mumbai.
Mr. Khan, and eight others, have been charged under Section 8 (c) (prohibition to produce, manufacture, possess, sell, purchase, transport, warehouse, use, consume, import inter-State, export inter-State, import into India, export from India or tranship any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance); Section 20 (b) (punishment for contravention in relation to cannabis plant and cannabis produces, manufactures, possesses, sells, purchases, transports, imports inter-State, exports inter-State or uses cannabis); Section 27 (punishment for consumption of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance); Section 28 (punishment for attempts to commit offences); and Section 29 (punishment for abetment and criminal conspiracy) read with Section 35 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act(presumption of culpable mental state).
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/no-positive-evidence-to-show-aryan-khan-2-others-conspired-to-commit-drug-related-offences-hc/article37594868.ece
