The Bombay High Court on Saturday released the detailed bail order of actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan and the 2 others accused in the cruiseship drug case.

In its 14-page detailed order, the court said no evidence of a conspiracy was found between Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant, and Munmun Dhamecha to commit drug-related offences. Nor was anything objectionable found in WhatsApp conversations between them, the court said.

Justice Nitin Sambre said that there is no material to infer that applicants hatched a conspiracy to commit an offence.

“For inferring the act of hatching conspiracy on the part of the Applicants and other co-accused, there has to be positive evidence about an agreement to do an unlawful act or to do lawful act by unlawful means and such agreement must precede with meeting of minds. Of course, such agreement can be express or implied or in parts. As far as the case in hand is concerned, the fact remains that Aryan Khan and Arbaaz Merchant were travelling together whereas Munmun Dhamecha had an independent travel plan which has no connection or relation with the travel of Aryan Khan and Arbaaz Merchant. After having gone through the WhatsApp chats extracted from Aryan Khan’s phone, nothing objectionable could be noticed to suggest that Khan and Merchant or all three applicants along with other accused persons in agreement have meeting of minds and have hatched conspiracy committing the offence in question,”

-the order said.

The Court said that merely because the accused were travelling on the cruise, cannot be a ground to invoke the offence of Section 29 against the accused. “There is hardly any positive evidence on record to convince this Court that all the accused persons with common intention agreed to commit unlawful act. Rather the investigation carried out till this date suggests that Aryan Khan and Arbaaz Merchant  were travelling independent of Munmun Dhamecha and there was no meeting of minds on the aforesaid issue,” the bail order said.

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The NCB had arrested Aryan Khan, Munmun Dhamecha and Arbaaz Merchant on October 3 following a raid on October 2 at a cruise in Mumbai on secret information about an alleged party on the cruise which was set to leave for Goa from Mumbai. They were granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 29.

In today’s order, the Court clarified that no drugs were found in Khan’s possession while the quantity recovered from Merchant and Dhamecha were not enough for charging them under the NDPS Act.

“So as to infer the case of conspiracy against the applicants also, there is absence of material on record of them having such meeting of minds with other accused who were named in the offence in question… The applicants were not even subjected to medical examination so as to determine whether at the relevant time, they had consumed drugs,”

-the order said.

Read full order below

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan walked out of Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail on Saturday after spending more than 3 weeks in jail following his arrest in an alleged drugs case.

Aryan Khan was released two days after the Bombay High Court granted him bail in the case. He had been granted bail on Thursday but had spent two more nights in jail as his bail papers missed the deadline.

The city NDPS Court also granted bail to alleged drug peddler Aachit Kumar and 6 others arrested in a drugs case, in which Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan is one of the accused.

Aryan Khan has been released on bail with 14 conditions. If he violates any of them, then the NCB is entitled to apply for cancellation of bail straightaway. The bail conditions by the high court apply to 2 others accused Aryan’s friend Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha, who got bail along with Khan.

Shah Rukh’s personal bodyguard Ravi Singh received the 23-year-old man outside the jail premises at 11.02 am. Aryan reached home Mannat in suburban Bandra shortly after 11.30 am.

SRK fans thronged the residence in large numbers outside celebrating Aryan Khan’s bail with music, dance and firecrackers. Aryan’s release was deferred by a day as the court order after surety from actor Juhi Chawla did not reach the prison by the 5:30 PM deadline on Friday.

Aryan was previously denied bail twice by a Mumbai magistrate court and the NDPS court in the drugs case.

A  special court in Mumbai on Thursday extended the judicial custody of actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son  Aryan Khan and seven others till October 30 in the Mumbai cruise ship drug case.

The Bombay High Court, however, said it would hear the bail applications of Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha on October 26.  The three had moved the High Court after Aryan Khan’s bail application was rejected by the Sessions Court in Mumbai. Though no contraband was found on Aryan Khan’s possession and person, the court found it to be a case of “conscious possession” since his friend Arbaaz Merchant had some 6 gm of charas.

Considering the Covid-19 protocols, the accused were not presented physically in the court and nor were they were produced from Arthur Road Jail either. The judgement was passed on the basis of the prosecution’s remand application.

Earlier on Thursday, Shah Rukh Khan visited the Arthur Road Jail on Thursday morning to meet his son, who has been in custody since October 3 in the cruise ship drugs case filed by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). This is the first time Shah Rukh has been seen in public after his son’s arrest.