Aryan Khan wants passport back, files plea before court
MUMBAI: About a month after the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) dropped the case against Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan, he moved a plea before a special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS) court on Tuesday seeking the return of his passport.
He filed a plea primarily in view of the fact that the NCB has not filed a charge sheet against him and five others, who were earlier named as accused in the cruise ship drugs case. Special NDPS judge VV Patil on Thursday directed the NCB to file their reply to the plea and posted the matter for hearing on July 13.
In his plea filed through advocate Rahul Agarwal of
Desai Desai Carrimjee and Mulla, the 24-year-old has also sought cancellation of his bail bond and a formal order, discharging him from the case.
Acting on a tip off, a team of the NCB officials, headed by the agency’s then Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede, had on October 2, 2021, searched certain passengers slated to take a holiday cruise to Goa from the International Cruise Terminal at Green Gate in Mumbai and their rooms booked on the cruise ship.
The agency had claimed that they had found 5 grams of Charas in possession of Aryan’s friend Arbaaz Merchant and he and Aryan had purportedly admitted that they both were going to consume the drug on the cruise.
However, after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik raised issues about investigation in the case and the charges levelled against several individuals by the NCB, the agency had removed Wankhede from the investigation and eventually handed it off to a special investigation team.
After the special investigation team completed investigation, the case against Aryan Khan was dropped on May 27.