According to those present at the hearing, the NCB was represented by Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Anil C Singh and counsel Advait M Sethna, while lawyer Satish Maneshinde was representing Aryan Khan, and advocate Taraq Sayed was representing Arbaaz Merchant and Munmun Dhamecha.
During the various arguments, the ASG, Anil C Singh, tried to draw similarities between the Aryan Khan case and the Rhea Chakraborty case from last year. To this, advocate Maneshinde pointed out dissimilarities between the two cases. The ASG then argued to the court that he could show Aryan’s involvement from other circumstances, too, to which Maneshinde shot back with more rebuttals. During this back and forth, the ASG commented, “Here it is (the contraband) recovered from the ship”. To which, Maneshinde replied, “The ship is not mine. You should have arrested the thousand others on the ship”.
That wasn’t the end of the arguments though. A little later, Maneshinde said, “There is nothing to establish my connection with people on the ship.” To that, the ASG retorted, “Why was he (Aryan) on the ship?” Before Maneshinde could reply, Taraq Sayed retorted, “1300 people were on the ship. It is not even their case that No. 1 (Aryan Khan) was distributing. He can buy the ship but…” That was followed by Maneshinde cutting into the conversation. The war of words between the counsels was animated and lots of heated arguments took place.
Eventually, the court decided that the accused should be kept in custody till October 7 so that the NCB could conduct a fair and effective investigation to prove the involvement or innocence of all the accused.
