Aryan Khan gets a clean chit from India's Narcotics Control Bureau in drugs case

Seven months after he was first arrested, Aryan Khan, the 24-year-old son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, has been cleared by India's Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) of all drug-related charges.

The NCB has reportedly given a clean chit to Aryan for alleged possession of drugs on a cruise ship off the coast of Mumbai. The news was confirmed by the Hindustan Times.

According to Pinkvilla, the NCB suspended two officers for negligence a few weeks earlier and one of them was involved in Aryan’s case. The Hindustan Times said 14 others were also given clean chits in the case. A special investigation team reexamined the case and found that there was not enough evidence to pursue it.

The Bollywood superstar's son was taken into custody by the NCB after a raid on a cruise ship in Mumbai on October 3, 2021, along with two others and charged with possession of narcotics. He was remanded into NCB custody till October 7 and presented in court multiple times but his bail plea was rejected each time. He then approached the Bombay High Court and was granted relief after three straight days of hearings.

The NCB said it recovered 13 grams of cocaine, five grams of MD, 21 grams of charas and 22 pills of MDMA, and 133,000 INR 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. Aryan's lawyer, on the other hand, contended that the conversations were taken out of context and did not relate to the use of drugs.