A special NDPS Act court in Mumbai on Tuesday granted bail to two persons, Manish Rajgaria and Evin Sahu, arrested in the Cordelia Cruises drugs bust case. Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, is one of the accused. The role of Rajgaria and Sahu was different from that of Aryan, special judge for cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, said VV Patil. follow live updates
Aryan’s bail plea is being heard by the Bombay High Court as the special court had earlier refused to grant him relief.
The court order clarified that there was prima facie no material that they were part of any larger network and their (Rajgadiya and Sahu) case could be separated from others against whom there was evidence of conspiracy. Rajgaria and Sahu became the first accused to get bail in this high profile case. The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) had claimed that the two were among the “guests” on the cruise ship, where narcotics were recovered from the Mumbai coast on October 2.
“The respondent (Narcotics Control Bureau, or NCB) failed to produce any evidence to show that he was either in contact with any of the accused or was in any way connected with the co-accused. The prosecution failed to show prima facie the nexus of the applicant with the co-accused to make out a case of conspiracy. Merely because the applicant was present on the cruise, he cannot be asked to act in conspiracy with the co-accused,” Vaibhav Patil, the special judge designated to hear cases related to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS). said. In a 12-page order on Evin Sahu’s bail plea. He had cited similar circumstances in his order granting bail to Rajgaria.
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The special NDPS Act Court, while granting bail to Sahu on Wednesday, said that merely because he was present on a cruise ship from where the drugs were allegedly seized, it cannot be said that he was “in conspiracy with the other accused”. ” Was.
Special Public Prosecutor Advait Sethna had argued that all the arrested accused (20 so far) were related to each other, and offenses under sections 28 and 29 (punishment for abetment and criminal conspiracy) of the NDPS Act were clearly framed. Were.
But Sahu’s lawyer Sana Raees Khanthe argued that his client was “falsely implicated. The judge said in the order that the NCB had failed to produce any evidence to show that Sahu was in touch with the other accused.” not disclosed. He has nothing to do with any of the accused or peddlers with drug peddlers,” the court said.
“The prosecution failed to point out any circumstance to show the nexus of the applicant (Sahu) with any of the co-accused,” the special court said. “Merely because the applicant was present on the cruise. It cannot be said that he conspired with the co-accused.”
The prosecution had argued that the court’s contention while dismissing the bail pleas of Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha, saying that there was an element of conspiracy, was applicable here as well. But the court disagreed.
“There is no evidence against the present applicant with regard to the conspiracy. Therefore, merely because the bail application of the co-accused is rejected, the bail application of the present applicant cannot be dismissed by applying the same analogy,” the judge said.
(with inputs from PTI)
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