Fifteenth accused in cruise drug bust case gets bail

A special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) court on Friday granted bail to fifteenth accused - Gurugram resident Mohak Jaiswal, who was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the Cordelia Cruise drugs bust case

A special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) court on Friday granted bail to Gurugram resident Mohak Jaiswal, who was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the Cordelia Cruise drugs bust case. Of the 20 people arrested in the case, Jaiswal has become the 15th accused to get bail.

Aryan Khan arrives at NCB office to mark his attendance in the drug case. A special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) court on Friday granted bail to Gurugram resident Mohak Jaiswal, who was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the Cordelia cruise drugs bust case. Of the 20 people arrested in the case, Jaiswal has become the fifteenth accused accused to get bail. (Pratik Chorge/HT PHOTO)

Special NDPS judge VV Patil granted Jaiswal bail on a personal bond of ₹50,000. Jaiswal was also directed to visit the NCB office every Monday.

Advocate Lakshmi Raman, who appeared for Jaiswal, had argued that there was no recovery from him, and as other accused in the case were already granted bail on the grounds of parity, he too, should be given bail. Raman also submitted that section 27A of NDPS Act (punishment for financing illicit trafficking and harbouring offenders) was not applicable to Mohak as he had not financed any co-accused to help support an illegal organisation or the business of drug trafficking. The counsel argued that investigation was completed and the allegations against the accused were vague and no direct role was attributed to Jaiswal.

Raman submitted that even if the entire case of prosecution was to be taken as “Gospel truth”, Jaiswal had only committed an offence for facilitating procurement of intermediary quantity of ecstasy pills for the co-accused and there is no material on record to show that he had committed any offence involving commercial quantity of contraband.

After arresting Jaiswal on October 3 along with other accused – Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant, Munmun Dhamecha, Vikrant Chokkar, Ishmeet Singh Chadha, Gomit Chopra and Nupur Satija – NCB had alleged that the ecstasy pills recovered from Satija were given by Jaiswal.

Based on the leads given by Jaiswal, the agency had arrested a man named Abdul Kadir Shaikh, 30, from Jogeshwari and had recovered commercial quantity of 54.3g of mephedrone and 2.5g of ecstasy from him.

Jaiswal’s bail application was initially rejected by a metropolitan magistrate court, after which he applied before the NDPS court.

Based on a tip-off that a rave party was scheduled on the ship off the Mumbai coast, an NCB team led by zonal director Sameer Wankhede raided the Goa-bound Cordelia cruise on the evening of October 2.

Aryan was granted bail by the Bombay high court on October 28.