After eight months of intense public scrutiny and media frenzy, Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan‘s son, Aryan Khan, was given a clean chit by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Friday, along with five others who were accused in a case related to the agency’s raid on a cruise ship last year.

NCB’s deputy director-general Sanjay Kumar Singh recently spoke to Hindustan Times and shed light on 5 key reasons which led to Khan’s clean chit. 

1. The NCB had said in court that the 24-year-old used to obtain contraband from his close friend, Arbaaz Merchant, who is one of the 14 people chargesheeted by the agency’s special investigation team (SIT). Singh informed that the old team failed to prove the allegation against Khan. 

2. The NCB provided screenshots of Khan‘s WhatsApp conversations in court, claiming that he was involved with an international drug cartel. The investigation revealed that the texts did not back up the claim. 

“ The courts have said that WhatsApp chats cannot be used as primary evidence,” Singh said.

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3. Singh highlighted three key lapses in the probe carried out by the previous team. He said that the team failed to record the raid on the cruise and did not conduct medical tests on anyone. He added that there was a slip-up in the seizure of mobile devices during the raid. 

4. Prabhakar Sail, a key witness in the case, told the investigating team that he was forced to sign blank papers by the old team. He later died of a heart attack.

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5. Singh said that the organizers of the cruise ship event had no knowledge of any narcotics on the Cordelia yacht.

“We checked their contract and found they were not responsible for frisking, checking and ensuring people boarding were going to consume drugs on the cruise,” he said.