‘Desperate to please BJP friends’: Cong’s Adhir Chowdhury on Mamata’s silence in Aryan Khan case

Congress’ West Bengal president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that the arrest of Shah Rukh Khan’s son, Aryan Khan, is a conspiracy to defame the Bollywood actor and his family as he didn’t bow before the BJP.

Amid the row over the arrest of Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, in the Mumbai cruise ship drugs raid case, which has drawn the attention of many politicians, West Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury wondered on Monday if chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo is tight-lipped on the matter to please her “friends in the Bharatiya Janata Party.”

Congress's West Bengal chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said TMC chief and chief minister Mamata Banerjee speaks on every topic, but is yet to do so on Aryan Khan's arrest.

“Our chief minister speaks on every topic, but she has maintained a stoic silence on the issue of the arrest of… Aryan Khan,” he told news agency PTI.

He added that Shah Rukh is the “brand ambassador of West Bengal,” and that Banerjee calls him her “brother.” “Then why is she silent on the issue? It seems she is desperate to please her friends in the BJP,” he was quoted as saying by PTI.

Citing the examples of Rhea Chakraborty being “hounded” in the Sushant Singh Rajput case, the Congress leader further claimed that the arrest of Aryan was a conspiracy hatched to “defame” Shah Rukh and his family as the actor didn’t bow before the BJP.

Besides Chowdhury, several politicians have spoken about Aryan Khan’s matter. The spokesperson of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Nawab Malik has recently said that the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) initially detained as many as 11 people in the case, but let go of three people, including the brother-in-law of a BJP leader.

Meanwhile, Union minister Narayan Rane’s son and BJP leader Nitesh Rane hit out at Malik, saying if the latter is sympathising with Aryan “because it’s a Khan.”

Aryan, who was arrested on October 3, is currently in judicial custody and lodged at Mumbai’s Arthur Road prison. His bail plea will next be heard on Wednesday by a special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) court.