[Aryan Khan drug case] Four more co-accused remanded to NCB custody

A Mumbai court on Tuesday remanded four persons arrested in relation to the cruise ship drug case to Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) custody till October 11, 2021.

The four accused were arrested in the same case as Aryan Khan (son of Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan) and seven others, who were on Monday remanded to NCB custody till October 7, 2021.

All twelve accused were arrested by NCB after a raid was conducted on Cordelia Cruises' Empress ship based on specific information of a supposed rave party.

On Tuesday, NCB was seeking remand of Abdul Kadir, Shreyas Nair, Manish Rajgariya and Avin Sahu.

Special Public Prosecutor Advait Sethna appearing for the NCB submitted that the following seizures were made in the present case against the four accused.

Kadir was allegedly found to be in possession of 54.3 grams of mephedron and 2.5 grams of ecstasy, Nair with 2 grams of charms and they were both supposedly suppliers.

Manish was found to be in possession of 2.4 grams of Ganja while Sahu was purportedly only a consumer.

Advocate Apoorv Srivastav appearing for Kadir stated that his arrest was an after-thought as he had been arrested a day after the raid was conducted by NCB. Furthermore, the person with whom Kadir was being linked to by NCB was not known to Kadir.

Advocates Himanshu Jahangid and Akshata Pasi appearing for the other accused also opposed the custody stating no seizures had been made from their clients.

Sethna responded that even if nothing was recovered from the persons, there was a requirement to investigate the quantity recovered from the ship.

"There was nothing recovered from Aryan Khan, but remand was given till October 7, 2021 in order to conduct complete investigation", Sethna argued.

After hearing the submissions and based on the alleged contraband seized, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate RM Nerlikar held that investigation was required for to be carried out to go to root of the case. Accordingly, custody was granted till October 11, 2021.

During the operation, NCB claimed to have recovered 13 grams of Cocaine, 5 grams of Mephedrone, 21 grams of charas, 22 pills of MDMA ecstasy and ₹1.33 lakhs in cash.

The accused were booked for offences under Sections 8(c), 20(b), 27, 28, 29 and 35 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

Besides Khan, Arbaaz Merchant, Munmun Dhamecha, Nupur Sarika, Ismeet Singh, Mohak Jaswal, Vikrant Chhoker and Gomit Chopra were remanded to NCB custody till October 7, 2021.