No bail for Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan as Mumbai court reserves decision till October 20

A special Mumbai court hearing the bail plea of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan has reserved its order and will announce its decision on October 20, according to the Hindustan Times.

Twenty-three-year-old Aryan will stay in jail till the next hearing of the case. He and two other young men were arrested on October 3 on a cruise ship near Mumbai after being accused of consuming and possessing drugs at a rave.

The court began hearing his bail plea on Wednesday and continued the hearing on Thursday because the lawyer from the Narcotics Control Bureau was not able to complete his arguments. Another court had rejected his bail plea on October 8.

The order has now been reserved till October 20, which means Aryan has been sent to jail. He was previously being kept in a special isolation ward but has tested negative for Covid-19 and has now been moved with other inmates.

Thirteen grams of cocaine, five grams of MD, 21 grams of charas and 22 pills of MDMA, and 133,000 INR was seized during the raid, however, none of the recovered narcotics were in Aryan’s possession. The NCB argued that that was immaterial and said he was a “regular consumer of drugs” according to his WhatsApp conversations.

He was booked under sections 8(c), 20(b), 27 and 35 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.

"Innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply in the cases of NDPS offences. In the NDPS Act, the presumption is of culpable a mental state, and it is for the accused to prove that he was not in possession during the trial," the NCB lawyer said.

Aryan’s lawyer argued that the WhatsApp conversations must be contextualised and said he was overseas for a while where forms of drug use are legal.