Shah Rukh Khan on Thursday visited son Aryan Khan at Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail, a day after a special court denied bail to the 23-year-old in the drugs-on-cruise case.
The megastar reached the prison at around 9 am and left at 9:35 am, news agency PTI quoted an official as saying. The official said that he met Aryan Khan for 15 to 20 minutes, adding that there was a glass fencing between them and they spoke on the intercom.
Predictably, there was media frenzy and a massive crowd trying to catch a glimpse of the actor as he stepped out of his car as well as when he walked out of the prison complex.
Shah Rukh Khan, who will turn 56 on November 2, was seen greeting people who were sitting in queue, doing a namaste before them as he was ushered out of the prison complex.
Videos of him outside the prison complex garnered hundreds of messages of support for the actor, who, many said showed grace and dignity in front of the cameras.
“Grace. Class. Decency,” tweeted actor Swara Bhasker.
“So much grace, so much grace. Patiently greeting those waiting in queue while his son is incarcerated within,” author Kiran Manral wrote on Twitter.
#ShahRukhKhan and #IStandWithSRK were among the top trending hashtags on the social media platform.
Heavy police security was deployed outside the jail premises.
“No parent, celebrity or otherwise, should ever go through such unfortunate moments,” sports activist and lawyer Rahul Mehra said on Twitter.
The prison authorities checked the actor's Aadhaar card and other documents before he entered the premises, PTI quoted officials as saying. After the verification of documents, a token was reportedly given to him by prison officials, following which he was allowed to meet his son, who is lodged in the jail's general barracks as an undertrial.
Aryan Khan, 23, has been booked under various sections of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) for possession and consumption of banned substances.
Meanwhile, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officials today visited Shah Rukh Khan’s home in Mumbai for seeking certain material related to their investigation into a cruise drugs party case in which the actor's son is an accused, a senior official of the agency said. It was not a raid, he said. The agency officials also visited actor Ananya Pandey's home and summoned her for questioning.
Seven people were arrested from the Goa-bound cruise ship on October 3 when the anti-drugs agency raided the ship and seized banned drugs. The agency raised the luxury cruise ship based on a tip-off that a party was scheduled on it.
(With inputs from PTI and ANI)
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