Friday, March 29, 2024

“This is case of no evidence at all,” Aryan Khan to Bombay HC

Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, in his plea in the Bombay High Court seeking bail, has said the Narcotics Control Bureau’s “interpretation and misinterpretation” of the WhatsApp chats collected from his mobile phone was “wrong and unjustified.”

Aryan told the court that NCB was “misinterpreting” his WhatsApp chats to implicate him in the case of seizure of banned drugs aboard a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast earlier this month.

Aryan, currently in jail, on Wednesday moved the high court after a special court rejected his application for bail. The high court will hear his bail plea on October 26.

The bail application contends that there is no material against Khan to justify his arrest and incarceration.

The plea went on to say: “Apart from inadmissible and illegally obtained material there is absolutely no material against the Applicant to justify his arrest and incarceration. The entire case of the prosecution is based solely on the statement of the Applicant u/s. 67 NDPS Act, which has been held to be inadmissible in Tofan Singh’s case and purported Whatsapp messages purportedly recovered from the mobile phone purportedly seized from the Applicant in flagrant violation of S. 100 Cr. P. C. and Section 50 NDPS Act and Art 20 of the Constitution of India. Furthermore such Whatsapp messages have no evidentiary value and a persons liberty for an offence punishable with one year cannot be deprived on such basis.”

The son of India’s global icon has further stated that the way a person’s status should not entitle him to any special privileges before the court of law, he must also not be saddled with an additional liability, as all are equal before a court of law, reported Live Law.

“That the bail of the Applicant should not be rejected merely because of the status of the Applicant. It is submitted that everybody is équal before law, Just as the status of a person should not afford any special privilege before the Court of law, such person also does not incur any special liability when he faces law in the Courts… Each case will have to be decided on its own merits – irrespective of the status of the accused,” read the plea.

Aryan added that there is no presumption in law that merely because a person is influential, he would tamper with the investigation.

Aryan also claimed that the “secret information” the central agency received against him was obviously false since nothing was recovered from him during the raid on October 2 and the “matter should have ended there,” but instead the alleged recovery of 2.6 grams of charas from his friend Arbaaz Merchant was sought to be connected with him by means of a false confession in the panchnama, reported Live Law.

WhatsApp messages are ex-facie for a period before the incident, according to Khan’s plea.

The interpretation of the Whatsapp messages is that of the investigating officer, and these interpretations are unjustified and wrong, Aryan told the court.

“This is case of no evidence at all, even if the court comes to the conclusion that offences under the NDPS Act are non-bailable there is no evidence to charge the applicant for any offence under the Act,” read the bail.

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