Explained: What lies ahead for Aryan Khan after NCB clean chit in drugs case
India Today
Find out what lies ahead for Aryan Khan after he was given a clean chit by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the Mumbai cruise drugs case.
Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan, who was arrested in connection with the Mumbai cruise drugs case in October 2021, was given a clean chit by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Friday. The probe agency indicated that it wasn’t able to gather sufficient evidence against Aryan following which his name was excluded from the chargesheet filed by the agency.
With the NCB clearing his name, let’s take a look at what lies ahead for Aryan Khan.
As per a constitution bench ruling of the Supreme Court in 2014, a person whose name does not figure in an FIR or a chargesheet but whose role in an alleged crime surfaces during the course of a trial would be subjected to the said trial.
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A constitution bench of the then Chief Justice P Sathasivam, justices B S Chauhan, Ranjana Prakash Desai, Ranjan Gogoi and S A Bobde said that the evidence against such an accused would be sufficient when it was being recorded and not at the stage of cross-examination of witnesses.
This means that, if the NCB at any point of time gets some kind of evidence against Aryan Khan, they can always name him by filing a supplementary chargesheet.
According to Supreme Court advocate K V Dhananjay, "If you are named in an FIR, investigated, probed, arrested and eventually dropped from the charge sheet and if you can establish that there was no reasonable ground for your name to even feature in the FIR, you may proceed against the people that are at fault -- the complainant, police and others. You may sue them in a civil court and seek monetary compensation that matches your status in society. You may also proceed against them in a criminal court for malicious prosecution, an offence that carries a punishment of up to 2 years under the Indian Penal Code (IPC)."
