NDPS court allows model Munmun Dhamecha to travel abroad

MUMBAI: A special NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act) court on Saturday permitted model Munmun Dhamecha, an accused in Cordelia cruise drug bust case, to travel to Thailand for five days for a photoshoot.
Dhamecha was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) along with actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan and several others following a raid on a cruise ship on October 3, 2021. A special enquiry team of the agency later dropped the proceedings against Aryan Khan and five others.
Submitting that the case had affected Dhamecha professionally, advocate Shirish Shigwan, appearing for the model, prayed for permission to travel abroad on the ground of parity, as the court had earlier permitted the other accused to travel. He said Dhamecha came from a middle-class family and that modelling was her only source of income.
Rebutting the applicant’s submissions, special public prosecutor Amit Munde argued that the applicant lacked bonafides. “Offence is serious. If the applicant is permitted to travel abroad, she may abscond, and it may delay the trial,” he added.
After hearing both the sides, special judge BY Phad allowed Dhamecha to travel to Phuket from Delhi on January 26, 2024, and return to Delhi on January 31, 2024. He also directed the accused to submit her itinerary before travelling abroad and to mark her attendance before the court as soon as she returned.
The CBI had on May 11, 2023, registered an FIR against five accused including Sameer Wankhede, who was the NCB’s Mumbai zonal director during the raid on the cruise ship in October 2021 and the subsequent arrest of Dhamecha and Khan. Wankhede and the others were accused of trying to extort ₹25 crore from Shah Rukh Khan in exchange for not booking his son in the drugs case and subsequently obtaining a bribe of ₹50 lakh from him. The other accused in the case are Vishwa Vijay Singh, then the superintendent of NCB; Ashish Ranjan, then an intelligence officer with NCB; and two private individuals – Kiran P Gosavi, a panch witness in the case, and Sanville D’Souza.