‘Did I Really Deserve It?’ Aryan Khan On NCB Drug Probe?

New Delhi: Superstar Shah Rukh Khan’ son Aryan has broken his silence at last.

In India Today magazine’s cover story, titled Lessons From The Aryan Khan Case, by Raj Chengappa, NCB’s deputy director-general (operations) Sanjay Singh, who headed the SIT, has revealed his conversations with Aryan Khan. In the interview, Sanjay Singh confesses that he did not expect the kind of ‘soul-searching queries Aryan Khan would make’. Sanjay says that after he made Aryan Khan comfortable by assuring him that he had come with “an open mind”, Aryan Khan confronted him by asking, “Sir, you have painted me as an international drug trafficker, that I finance drug trafficking — aren’t these charges absurd? They did not find any drugs on my person that day and yet they arrested me. Sir, you have done me great wrong and ruined my reputation. Why did I have to spend so many weeks in jail — did I really deserve it?”

In November 2021, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed to independently probe the charges of possession and consumption of drugs against Aryan Khan and 19 others.

Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) zonal directorate, headed by Sameer Wankhede at the time had prepared a case against the star son and the team was probing it.

The NCB had arrested Aryan and five others in the Cordelia cruise drug bust at the Mumbai port on October 2. The agency had claimed that a substantial quantity of illicit drugs was seized from the youngsters and that Aryan had links with an international drugs syndicate.

However, after spending more than 20 days in custody last year, Aryan Khan was cleared of all charges due to lack of sufficient evidence.

The interview further reveals that during his investigation, Sanjay Singh learned that Shah Rukh Khan, also wanted to meet him. Since Sanjay Singh had met the parents of the other accused, he agreed to meet SRK too. When Shah Rukh and Sanjay Singh met, SRK raised concerns about his son’s mental and emotional state. He said that Aryan was apparently not sleeping well and Shah Rukh himself had to go to Aryan’s bedroom to keep him company through the night.

Shah Rukh also said that his son was ‘being vilified’ even though there was no substantial evidence against him. Almost in tears, Shah Rukh Khan told Sanjay Singh, “We have been painted as some kind of big criminals or monsters who are out to destroy society and we find going to work tough every day.”