Mumbai: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Friday argued before a special court against granting bail to Cordelia cruise case accused Aachit Kumar by citing his chats with Aryan Khan. It told the court that if the court had found in its order while rejecting the plea of Aryan for bail that he was regularly dealing with narcotic substances, the same should apply to Aachit, as he is the supplier.
The NCB had arrested Aachit on October 6. It claimed it found 2.6 gm ganja at his residence and that the search was in a follow up action after voluntary statements to it of Aryan and his friend Arbaaz Merchant revealed his name. The agency had termed him the supplier of drugs to them.
Special Public Prosecutor for the NCB Advait Sethna on Friday showed the court a file containing WhatsApp chats and said there is bulk quantity reference in the material. “It cannot be a mere coincidence that you (Aachit) are expressing yourself in a particular manner when contraband, drug and bulk quantity is involved,” he argued. The prosecutor said there is a chain of conversations which cannot be brushed aside as children doing light banter. “One is so callous then one has to bear the consequences of law,” he added.
Aachit’s advocate Ashwin Thool in his bail arguments on Thursday had objected to the use of the word ‘peddler’ for Aachit and said the 22-year-old had studied in an IB school and his parents are service-going people. He had been studying in London for the past three years and had no need to do such peddling as alleged, he said.
Sethna told the court on Friday that the word ‘peddler’ was not used by the agency loosely and that he was the common supplier to both Aryan and Arbaaz.
On Thursday, a co-accused Manish Rajgarhia’s advocate Taraq Sayed had disputed the recovery of drugs from Rajgarhia. He had told the court that documents part of the panchnama showed that the recovered drug was handed over by a chief security officer of the cruise ship to an NCB officer and it is not specified from where it was recovered before being handed over. Prosector Sethna said regarding this, that a statement of the said security officer shows that Rajgarhia had surrendered the drugs to him.
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