Aryan case falls flat
The high-profile drug conspiracy and trafficking case under the stringent NDPS Act made against Aryan Khan, actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son, by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) while raiding the Cordelia yacht in Mumbai in October last year and his much-publicised arrest the next day has fallen flat. Corroborating the subsequent Bombay High Court order, the bureau’s own SIT formed to look into the controversial raid has found no evidence of the grave charges levelled against Aryan. In effect, the young boy (and his associates) suffered a 25-day imprisonment and untold misery, harassment and humiliation for, perhaps, nothing. And that erodes NCB’s credibility.
Putting the spotlight on the glaring procedural lapses by the raiders, the findings highlight how an overzealous officer — and in this case, a possibly publicity-hungry one too, Sameer Wankhede — can make an innocent person’s life hell. He also pursued the well-known Rhea Chakraborty angle in the Sushant Singh Rajput suicide case. Wankhede has since been repatriated to his parent cadre. He is under the scanner for allegations of irregularities in conducting the raid, including incriminating Aryan over flimsy proof, choosing of witnesses and blackmailing the superstar’s family for extortion of money. The case is a reflection of the typical question mark hanging over our law enforcement agencies of overstepping their authority in everyday cases. Sadly, as a result, many poor victims are forced to either give up the battle for justice or give in to the corrupt officials’ greed.
The case once more underscores the important issue of the big sharks involved in the multi-crore illicit drug trade — that is ruining the lives of lakhs of young and vulnerable victims and their families — escaping the police net. The authorities need to concentrate their energies and huge human and logistic resources to catch the big culprits and strike at the root of the menace. The slow progress in the September 3,000-kg drug haul from Gujarat’s Mundra port as compared to the Aryan case that yielded a few grams of narcotics points to misplaced and lopsided priorities of the law enforcers.
