A special NDPS Act court in Mumbai on Tuesday granted bail to two persons – Manish Rajgaria and Avin Sahu – arrested in Cordelia cruise drugs bust case in which Aryan Khan, the son of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, is one of the accused. The role attributed to Rajgaria and Sahu was different from that attributed to Aryan, special judge for cases under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act V V Patil said. Follow LIVE Updates
Aryan’s bail plea is being heard by the Bombay High Court after the special court refused him relief earlier.
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The court order explained that there was no prima-facie material that they (Rajgaria and Sahu) were part of any larger network and their case can be distinguished from that of others against whom there was evidence of conspiracy. Rajgaria and Sahu became the first accused in this high profile case to get bail. The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) had claimed that the two were among the “guests” on the cruise ship where narcotic drugs were recovered off the Mumbai coast on October 2.
“The respondent (Narcotics Control Bureau, or NCB) failed to produce on record any evidence to show that he was either in contact with any of the accused or that in any way that he is connected with co-accused. The prosecution failed to show nexus of the applicant with co-accused to prima-facie make a case of conspiracy. Merely because the applicant was present on the cruise, he cannot be said to be acted in conspiracy with the co-accused,” Vaibhav Patil, the special judge designated to hear cases relating to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS), said in a 12-page order on Sahu’s bail request. He cited similar circumstances in his order granting bail to Rajgaria.
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Merely because he was present on a cruise ship from where drugs were allegedly seized, it can not be said that he was “in conspiracy” with the other accused, the special NDPS Act court said on Wednesday while granting bail to Sahu.
Special public prosecutor Advait Sethna had contended that all the arrested accused (20 until now) were connected to each other, and offenses under sections 28 and 29 (punishment for abetment and criminal conspiracy) of NDPS Act were clearly made out.
But Sahu’s lawyer Sana Raees Khanthe argued that her client had been “falsely implicated”. The judge noted in the order that the NCB failed to produce any evidence to show that Sahu was in contact with the other accused. “He has not disclosed the name of any accused or peddlers, he has no connection with drug peddlers,” the court said.
The prosecution “failed to point out any circumstances to show the nexus of the applicant (Sahu) with any co-accused to prima facie make out the ingredients of the conspiracy,” the special court said. “Merely because applicant was present on the cruise, he can not be said to be (having) acted in conspiracy with co-accused,” it added.
The prosecution had contended that the court’s reasoning while rejecting the bail applications of Aryan, his friend Arbaaz Merchant and model Munmun Dhamecha, holding that there was an element of conspiracy, was applicable here too. But the court disagreed.
“There is no evidence against the present applicant in respect of conspiracy. Therefore, merely because bail applications of co-accused are rejected, bail application of the present applicant can not be rejected by applying same analogy,” the judge said.
(with inputs from PTI)
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