Aryan Khan moves plea before NDPS court seeking return of passport

|HT|

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 NCB had set up a special investigation team, which eventually dropped the case against Aryan Khan on May 27.

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