In a significant development, a senior Shiv Sena leader urged the Supreme Court to order a probe by a sitting judge of the apex court into the affairs of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and violation of fundamental rights of Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan.
Making the plea under Article 32 of the Constitution, Kishore Tiwari, accorded the Minister of State (MoS) status, has urged Chief Justice N.V. Ramana’s ‘top priority’ intervention into the manner in which the ‘biased’ NCB is ‘hounding’ film personalities, models and other celebs for nearly two years with ‘malafide motives’.
He said that under Article 32, the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice of India (CJI) are duty-bound to take cognisance of every matter pertaining to the fundamental rights violation, as guaranteed under Part III of the Indian Constitution, which the NCB is flouting.
Referring to the Special NDPS Court (Mumbai) deferring the verdict in the bail plea of Aryan and other accused until October 20, while citing public holidays, the plea said this has subjected the accused “to big humiliation and kept in jail in an undemocratic and illegal way” for 17 nights.
Accusing the NCB and its officials of ‘vendetta’ by targeting select celebs, Tiwari demanded a probe into the role of the central narcotics agency and the Mumbai Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede, whose wife is a well-known Marathi filmstar, in direct competition with the other stars and celebs being hounded.
Pointing a needle of suspicion at Wankhede, the plea said the officer’s wife is trying to make big in Bollywood, and that’s why only leading names in the film industry, their families, national-international models, producers-directors are brought under the NCB lens.
“Starting with the probe into the Sushant Singh Rajput death case, the probe has been ‘totally diverted in an unrelated direction’ ... The alleged NCB seizures are ‘miniscule jokes’ compared to the Mumbai Police achievements, or the DRI which last month seized 3000-kgs drugs from Mundra Port in Gujarat,” Tiwari said in the plea.
When the law has been settled by the highest court of the country, the NCB and the Special NDPS Court have “failed to give due regards” by depriving Aryan and others bail, which could be done right away, even on public holidays, and thus there is ‘total miscarriage of justice’.
“With the recent shocking exposure on NCB by Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik, its high time the NCB Mumbai and all-India must be probed by an SC judge to unravel the rackets and the truth...It’s a fit case for immediate intervention by the SC,” Tiwari demanded, among other things.
Contending the NCB’s grudge and autocratic style are even more glaring, the Sena leader added that no contraband drugs were recovered from Aryan, there was no medical examination proving consumption, etc., yet he has been shunted into different types of custody since October 3.
After the NCB swooped on a luxury cruise ship to bust an alleged rave party on October 2, Aryan, along with seven others were detained, arrested on October 3 and have remained in NCB and judicial custody since for the past 17 days, with their bail order likely be delivered by Special Judge V.V. Patil on Wednesday (October 20).
