New Delhi: Actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son is among those detained after a team of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) raided a cruise ship off Mumbai coast Saturday.
The NCB seized several drugs including Cocaine, Mephedrone, Ecstasy and hashish on the ship which was headed for Goa Saturday night. NCB’s zonal director Sameer Wankhede boarded the ship along with his team posing as passengers and started conducting searches when drugs began to be consumed, NCB sources said.
An NCB official who did not wish to be named said, the agency has currently detained eight people and they are being questioned. Aryan Khan’s WhatsApp chats are also being examined.
The NCB officials had received a tip-off regarding a rave party being organised on a cruise which was to leave for Goa from Mumbai. The entry fee for the cruise party was Rs 1 lakh, according to some reports and a Delhi-based entity is believed to have supplied most of the drugs on the ship.
Along with Khan, seven others — Munmun Dhamecha, Nupur Sarika, Ismeet Singh, Mohak Jaswal, Vikrant Chhoker, Gomit Chopra and Arbaaz Merchant — have also been detained and are now being questioned by the NCB, the official said.
Social media accounts of one of the seven, Arbaaz Seth Merchant, shows him attending parties along with other celebrity kids such as Ananya Pandey, Shanaya Kapoor and Aryan’s sister Suhana Khan. A short clip of Aryan Khan sitting at the NCB office has gone viral.
ANI quoted NCB chief SN Pradhan saying, “It’s a result of a painstaking investigation that went on for two weeks. We acted on specific intelligence inputs, involvement of some Bollywood links has come to light”.
“We are acting in an impartial manner. In the process, if some connections to Bollywood or rich people emerge, so be it. We have to act within the purview of the law,” Pradhan told ANI.
On Saturday, NCB sent a summon to the organisers of the rave party — a total of 13 people including 3 women were taken into custody after the raid on Saturday. Of the 13, eight, including Aryan Khan, are being detained for questioning.
(Edited by Paramita Ghosh)
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