The Bombay High Court's order which granted bail to actor Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan in the drugs-on-cruise case was released on November 20, and it states that there was "no positive evidence of conspiracy" between him and other two accused.
Aryan Khan, along with co-accused Munmun Dhamecha and Arbaz Merchant, was arrested following a raid by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) at a cruise ship in Mumbai on October 7. They were granted bail by the Bombay HC on October 29.
The bail order, which has been released today, said there was "nothing objectionable found in the WhatsApp chats" of Khan to suggest there was conspiracy between him, Merchant and Dhamecha.
Only the fact that Khan, Merchant and Dhamecha were travelling in the same cruise cannot, by itself, be a foundation for the charge of conspiracy against them, the court said.
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The HC also noted that the NCB cannot rely on the alleged confessional statements made by the accused. "Such confessional statements are not having any binding effect in law" as per a 2013 Supreme Court judgment, it said.
The accused "were were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether at the relevant time, they had consumed drugs," the court further observed.
It is "difficult to infer" at this stage that Khan, Merchant and Dhamecha are involved in offence of commercial quantity and there is "absence of material record" to infer they have hatched criminal conspiracy, the bail order said.
Notably, Khan and other accused were released by the court on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh each. The trio were ordered to surrender their passports before the special NDPS court and they shall not leave India without taking permission from the special court.
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