MUMBAI, Nov 20: The Bombay High Court in its order said, “The court prima facie has not noticed any positive evidence against Aryan Khan and two others” in the drug racket case busted on a cruise last month.
A single bench of justice Nitin Sambre had granted bail to Mr. Khan, co-accused Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha on October 28 however the detailed order is made available on Saturday.
The bench remarked, “There is hardly any positive evidence on record to convince this Court that all the accused persons with common intention agreed to commit unlawful act. There is no material evidence to connect all these three applicants with other co-accused on the issue of conspiracy.”
The bench went on to say, “Rather the investigation carried out till this date suggests that Mr.Khan and Mr.Merchant were travelling independent of Ms. Dhamecha and there was no meeting of minds on the aforesaid issue. So as to infer the case of conspiracy against the applicants also, there is absence of material on record of them having such meeting of minds with other accused who were named in the offence in question.”
The court stated, “This Court is of the opinion that the claim put forth by the Narcotic Control Bureau that the accused should be considered to have intention to commit an offence under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, having found in possession of commercial quantity, in the backdrop of case of hatching conspiracy is liable to be rejected.”
The court also took note of the fact that the accused were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether at the relevant time, they had consumed drugs.
On October 2, the central agency seized 13 grams of cocaine, five grams of MD (mephedrone), 21 grams of charas, 22 pills of MDMA (ecstasy) and ₹ 1,33,000 cash at the International Cruise Terminal, Mumbai.
Mr. Khan along with eight others have been charged with sections 8 (c) – prohibition to produce, manufacture, possess, sell, purchase, transport, warehouse, use, consume, import inter-State, export inter-State, import into India, export from India or tran-ship any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance, 20 (b) – punishment for contravention in relation to cannabis plant and cannabis produces, manufactures, possesses, sells, purchases, transports, imports inter-State, exports inter-State or uses cannabis, 27 – punishment for consumption of any narcotic drug or psychotropic substance, 28 – punishment for attempts to commit offences and 29 – punishment for abetment and criminal conspiracy read with 35 – presumption of culpable mental state of the NDPS Act. (Agencies)
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