Cordelia cruise raid: NCB SIT terms media report giving clean chit to Aryan Khan as 'speculation'

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Wednesday termed a media report - stating that no evidence was found that Aryan Khan, the son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, was part of a larger drugs conspiracy or an international drugs trafficking syndicate, that was busted by the Mumbai NCB Unit in October last year following a raid at a cruise ship - as just "speculations".

The media report had stated that there were several irregularities in the raid on the yacht Cordelia during which Aryan was arrested and attributed its report to the key findings of the a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).

Reacting to the said report, Deputy Director General of NCB Sanjay Singh, who is also head of SIT stated, "As far as the media reports are concerned they're are not true these are just speculations and nothing else these reports were not cross checked wid NCB , Investigation is not yet complete. Nothing can be said at this stage.Premature to say anything at this stage."

A 22-member team headed by NCB Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede on October 02 conducted a clandestine raid in the mid-sea on information that drugs were being used in a cruise party. During the raid, they arrested Aryan Khan, along with Munmum Dhamecha, Arbaaz Merchantt, Vikrant Chhokar, Mohak Jaswal, Ishmeet Singh Chadha, Gomit Chopra and Nupur Satija. The NCB had seized 13 grams of cocaine, 21 grams of charas, 22 pills of MDMA, 5 grams of MD and Rs 1.33 lakh in cash during the raid. The agency had arrested 20 persons, including two Nigerian nationals in the said case.

Following the raid, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, Nawab Mallik had levelled a series of allegations against Wankhede and certain witnesses involved with the case.

In November, an SIT comprising officers from Operations Branch of NCB had been constituted by the DG NCB to take over a total of six cases from NCB Mumbai which have national and international ramifications, in order to conduct deeper investigations to find out forward and backward linkages. The cases included cruise raid case involving Aryan Khan and case involving Malik's son in law Sameer Khan.