Cruise ship drugs case: Financial transactions of accused are under scanner, says NCB official

Narcotics Control Bureau office at Ballard Estate, Mumbai. File Pic/Shadab Khan

The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) is scrutinizing the financial transactions of all the arrested accused including actor Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan in the cruise ship drugs seizure case, an official said.

He also said that the agency would oppose the bail plea of Aryan Khan before the Bombay High Court, scheduled for hearing on October 26. The NCB has so far arrested 20 persons after raiding a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast on October 2 and allegedly seizing narcotic drugs.

The probe team has already collected transaction records of some of the accused from whom 'commercial' or large quantity of drugs (which attracts harsher punishment under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act) had been seized, the official said. The agency is also checking the accused persons' sources of income.

The investigating team is extracting deleted messages and WhatsApp chats from mobile phones, laptops and other electronic gadgets of the accused and checking if they used any other social media platforms for communicating with each other, the official said. The NCB had allegedly found MDMA from some of the accused during the raid. This drug is mostly sourced from Europe and the United States, and the agency was probing from where the accused obtained it, the official said.
Hydroponic weed seized from the accused had been procured through the dark net (clandestine Internet portals), he claimed.

Actor Ananya Panday, who has been questioned by the agency in connection with the case, was cooperating with the investigation, the NCB official said. On October 22, the agency conducted searches at six locations in the city and seized mobile phones, laptops and other electronic gadgets from some suspects, he said.

Earlier in the morning, Shah Rukh Khan's manager Pooja Dadlani was seen visiting the NCB office in Ballard Estate in south Mumbai. On October 21, an NCB team had visited the actor's residence 'Mannat' in suburban Bandra.

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