Like all superstar fathers, Shah Rukh Khan too must have thought of launching Aryan Khan in a big way on the silver screen, but unfortunately, Aryan got caught in the wrong frame.
The hype created around the arrest of Aryan Khan, the 23-year-old son of cine superstar Shah Rukh Khan, has not died down for obvious reasons. As of now, he is lodged in Barrack 1 of Arthur Road jail under judicial custody. On the face of it, it looks like an open and shut case. He was found on a cruise ship that was hosting a rave party with drugs being distributed freely in it.
NCB officials had infiltrated the party disguised as party revelers to catch the culprits red-handed. While doing so, Aryan Khan was also nabbed by the NCB officials and was subsequently produced before a magistrate along with seven others who were nabbed. Nothing seems amiss about it. But as always, there is more than what meets the eye.
Scratching the surface a little bit raises many questions about the intentions of this raid and its people, thereby indicating a political vendetta. New facts are tumbling out every day. This has erupted into a political storm.
The Maharashtra government has charged that the NCB is acting in collusion with the BJP. It has released a video showing two people escorting Aryan Khan and the other accused to the NCB Mumbai office to ascertain its claim. The Maharashtra government claims that one of them is a BJP worker named Manish Bhanushali, and the other is a private detective named K P Gosavi.
The NCB rule book stipulates that the persons escorting the accused have to be NCB officials. These two were on the cruise ship at the time of raid. K P Gosavi himself is an absconder from law with Pune police booked him in a cheating case in 2018 for duping people of money by luring them with the promise of jobs. It is alleged that the other person Manish Bhanushali also has a criminal past and was involved in extortion rackets.
The NCP government has asked the NCB to explain what these private individuals were doing in the raid as the NCB has categorically stated that they are not officials of NCB. The individuals themselves maintain that they were acting as informants, whereas the NCB says they were independent eyewitnesses.
These conflicting statements have raised suspicion about the whole raid. The NCB maintains that all the guidelines pertaining to a raid were followed, and no norms were flouted. The NCP government in Maharashtra has challenged this. The NCB retorted by daring the NCP government to take them to court if they wanted to.
The NCP government also alleges that K P Gosavi clicked selfies with Aryan Khan when he was in custody, which is also completely against the protocol. Once an accused is in the custody of NCB, then no photographs are allowed. They are taken only by the department for the purpose of maintaining a record. Another glaring anomaly in the story spun by NCB is that Manish claims himself to be an informer, but an informer cannot expose himself to public glare as part of protocol. This is a clear breach of NCB protocol as well as the NDPS Act.
This kind of carelessness is not expected from a national investigative agency with an overall good track record. The cruise ship should have been detained and rummaged through by customs department officials to ensure no more drugs were left on the ship. This did not happen, and the ship was allowed to proceed after disembarking Aryan Khan and the other co-accused.
If a rave party was going on the ship, how come only eight people were on drugs and nobody else, whereas hundreds of others were present there. Moreover, the NCB itself has ascertained that no drugs were found on Aryan Khan.
The NCP further alleges that this is a diversionary tactic to divert attention from the huge seizure of heroin from the Mundra port. It reveals a sinister plot to target and malign Shah Rukh Khan and send a warning signal to the Mumbai film industry. Another aspect of this episode is that the amount of drugs seized from Aryan Khan is miniscule in contrast to the 3000 kg of heroin recovered from Mundra Port but no arrests have been made.
It is reported that more than 25,000 kg of heroin have been smuggled through the Mundra Port in the month of June. They have been distributed throughout the country but again no arrests have been made in spite of this becoming public knowledge. All this raises serious doubts about the intention behind the raid.
