The Bombay High Court on Thursday granted bail to Aryan Khan and co-accused Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha in plea against rejection of their bail applications by a special NDPS court in the cruise ship drug bust case.
Operative part of the order will be made available by tomorrow with reasoned order.
The accused will not be released from jail tonight.
Aryan Khan, 23, has been in custody since October 3, hours after drug raids on a cruise ship party by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).
He has been in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail since October 8 and had been denied bail twice before.
Aryan Khan’s father Shah Rukh Khan, 55, is one of India’s global icons and most-loved movie stars.
On Wednesday, Senior Advocate Amit Desai, representing co-accused and Aryan’s friend Arbaaz Merchant, argued before the single-judge bench of Justice Nitin W Sambre that the NCB’s arrests in the case were “illegal” because the agency failed to follow procedure under section 41A of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which mandates the investigating officer to issue notice of appearance prior to arrest.
Opposing Aryan’s bail plea during the HC hearing on Thursday, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) counsel ASG Anil Singh said applicant Aryan Khan is not a first-hand consumer but a regular consumer of drugs for the last two years.
Khan’s lawyers had repeatedly argued that no drugs had been found on him and that the grounds for his arrest were flimsy.
