After a five-hour long hearing, a special court under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act in Mumbai reserved the order for October 20 on the bail application of Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha in connection with the cruise ship drugs bust case.
In the hearing, ASG Anil Singh drew a similarity between the cruise rave party case and that of the Rhea Chakraborty-Showik case. He told the court that the fact that Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan was not found in possession of drugs does not mean he should get bail.
Meanwhile, arguing in court, Aryan Khan's lawyer Amit Desai said that somebody's liberty is at stake, without the investigation being affected, bail can still be granted.
The agency in its reply to the bail plea, which was submitted in front of the special NDPS court on Wednesday, said the quantity of the recovery is immaterial as the initial probe has revealed that Aryan Khan is a regular consumer of drugs and used to procure through Arbaaz Merchant.
Speaking on behalf of Aryan Khan, lawyer Desai said: "The fundamental argument is that there was a rave party. I was not found with anything. I cannot be held responsible. There is nothing on the phone about the messages about rave party. This young man was overseas for a while. In those countries some times lot of things are legitimate. I don't know what kind of chats are there. I have not seen. The possibility of conspiracy and speculation cannot hold me back in this case.
However, ASG has argued that Toofan is not applicable for bail. But in fact it says that it is applicable even at the stage of bail.
"The chat messages which they tried to suggest is evidence is an extra-judicial is confession which is a weak form of evidence. And the chats have no section 65B certificate. Let him be a free man. Let strict conditions be imposed upon him. But this is a fit case for bail. Even if 37(2) I have satisfied requirements under that and there are no antecedents," said Desai.
The lawyer has closed his arguments by saying that Aryan Khan has no criminal antecedents.
The three were arrested on October 3 and are currently lodged at Arthur Road prison. Their bail plea was submitted in the special NDPS court after a Mumbai magistrate rejected their bail and remanded them to judicial custody.
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