Party drugs are embedded in Mumbai’s youth culture, NCB cannot handpick selective targets for their own benefits. After Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, there were constant attacks on Bollywood, at some point media got tired and dwindled a bit. But today they got a new reason to condemn Khans.
Sharukh Khan’s son Ayan Khan is detained in the drug case. He was part of some event, named Cray’Ark, which was organized by FashionTV India with Namascray onboard the Cordelia, an Indian cruise liner. It was a three-day cruise journey. The cruise was supposed to depart at 2 pm from Mumbai and return at 10 am on October 4 after sailing in the Arabian Sea. On the basis of unambiguous information, the officials of NCB, Mumbai, conducted a raid on the Cordelia cruise that was bound from Mumbai to Goa on October 2. During the operation, all suspects, as per the information, were searched and various drugs like MDMA/ecstasy, cocaine, MD (mephedrone), and charas were recovered. A total of 8 persons, including 2 females, have been apprehended and their role is being investigated in relation to the said recovery. NCB has registered crime no. Cr 94/21 in this matter. Further investigations are underway.
Meanwhile, some NCB officials clicked pictures with detained Aryan and posted them on social media, and that is how the attack on the Khan family and Bollywood took a new episode.
NCB officials have sent all eight individuals to jail and many such arrests were made, but during all this tamasha NCB was caught in a fire and there were constant attacks on their credibility. Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Nawab Malik have alleged that Sameer Wankhede was in the Maldives during the lockdown and was conducting an extortion racket on the Bollywood personalities present there. He has also alleged that the officer is acting at the behest of the BJP to discredit the Maharashtra government.
Though Wankhede has brushed off the allegations, saying he went to the Maldives with his children, “with proper permission, legally and with my own money”. If you followed the press coverage in the days following the police raid, you could conclude that the event was a pure extraction of all the evil of Bollywood and their children that could possibly live on drugs and they should be banned permanently.
Viewers were free to imagine their favourite Bollywood evil involving cocaine, MDMA, and parties. There is half-truth and half-baked stories. Uncontrolled coverage based on assumptions and imaginations. In subsequent days, “police sources” made all sorts of insinuations — mainly about the star kid — while speaking to the press.
The NCB had launched a probe into the alleged drug use in Bollywood after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput in June on the basis of WhatsApp chats involving drugs. The central agency had earlier arrested Rajput’s friend, actress Rhea Chakraborty, her brother Showik, some employees of the late Bollywood actor, and a few others under sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. Rhea Chakraborty and some other accused are currently out on bail. But social media attacks have not stopped here.
We must know, Drugs are not new to the city. If one has to really control this maniac then there is no point in being selective. Lack of parental control, easy availability of drugs, the new culture of being cool and chilling out — whatever that might cause, throwaway income and cut-throat competition at the work, unstable relations, life challenges, divided families, and over individuality have contributed to “dope parties”, held mostly on the city’s outskirts at temporarily isolated venues, open fields, seashores or vacant buildings or boats. The raid on a rave party is not new; there are hundreds of raids and again hundreds of such events too. The Rave party culture of Mumbai is in the heart of Mumbai’s young minds. Each one of them is in search of solace. Such “rave bashes” are gaining popularity, particularly among teenagers and young adults who are hard on drugs. The peddlers are hand in gloves with cops; the tippers are also the peddlers, one against another. These Youngers undergo a lot of humiliation, rejection, and dishonour.
Most youngsters who are a part of such gangs say that it’s their way to “distress”. Once you enter the rave chain, such parties are passed on through word-of-mouth or SMSes, an advertising professional who regularly attends rave.
