Five compelling arguments in Aryan Khan’s bail application

Aryan Khan was represented by senior lawyers Satish Maneshinde and Amit Desai in a special NDPS (Narcotic Drugs And Psychotropic Substances) Court today. While Desai joined Khan’s legal team today, senior counsel Maneshinde has been defending Aryan at the magistrate court for the past few days. Throughout the past few hearings, as well as today’s brief appearance in court, Aryan’s lawyers have offered some compelling arguments that should have ideally fetched the young man bail. But the honourable court and judiciary has to function according to strict protocol and due diligence, so it has yet to take action on these arguments. Here we bring you five compelling arguments from the reported bail application filed by Aryan’s lawyers in a special NDPS court. From the common man’s perspective, these reported arguments seem pretty convincing.

From day one, Aryan’s lawyer Satish Maneshinde has argued in court that Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officials have found no contraband in Aryan’s possession. Therefore NCB’s request to not grant bail, citing an embargo on bail under section 37 of the NDPS act doesn’t apply to Aryan at all. Especially since nothing was recovered from him and allegations for other accused in the case like Arbaaz Merchant, Munmun Dhamecha and others are also of small quantity.

This point put forth in Aryan Khan’s bail plea basically establishes the fact that since Aryan’s father Shah Rukh Khan is a prominent public figure, he will not interfere with the investigation and going forward, he will cooperate with the investigation in every way.

This plea in detail states, ‘The applicant is innocent and has not committed any crime whatsoever. The applicant has been falsely implicated in the present case’. Through this point, Aryan’s application is directly trying to establish that Aryan is not involved in the consumption, possession or sale of the contraband in any way and that he should not be in custody at all.

Aryan’s lawyers have been offering this argument in court for a while now. The exact statement in the application reads, ‘The prosecution is relying solely upon certain alleged WhatsApp chats to entangle him in the present proceedings without veracity or accuracy of the chats being established’. The lawyers have always claimed that chats can be corroborated evidence and are not really relevant to Aryan’s case because no substance was found on him in the first place.

The final and relevant point in Aryan’s bail application states that, ‘That India is dealing with Covid-19 pandemic and the city of Mumbai has been especially suffering...Given the factual matrix of the present case and the ongoing pandemic, remanding the applicant to extended custody would be prejudicial to his physical health as well’. This point is basically establishing the point that since Aryan is lodged in Arthur Road Jail during his judicial custody, he could be potentially at risk of contracting a Covid infection or other physical health hazards.