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CRIME: BOLLYWOOD-DRUG LINKS
Snorter Of A Scandal
Fardeen Khan may have inadvertently fallen into a
trap set for others, but investigations may finally expose the cocaine
trail in filmdom
By Sheela Raval and Sandeep Unnithan with Shishir
Gupta
It's well past midnight
on May 5. The phone rings in Ajay Ubale's south Mumbai residence. The
zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has just arrived
from the late-night show of Jodi No. 1. Ubale takes the call and breaks
into a smile as a trusted informant from the other end whispers that a
consignment of 9 kg of cocaine is going to be picked up at the HSBC ATM
in Juhu in an hour or so. The customers-a pop singer and a political personality
in a Pajero and a Mercedes-are expected to meet notorious drug peddler
Nasir Abdul Karim Sheikh, he adds.
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AGONY AND IRONY: Fardeen (left, in dark glasses) after his release
on bail; (right) film stars, role models for their numerous fans,
routinely campaign against drug abuse
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| Tinsel
town is seen as a land of opportunity by drug czars with money to
reinvest. |
There is no time to lose. A couple of quick calls
and Ubale dashes off to the Centaur Hotel in Juhu where his team is waiting
for him. Together, they head for the HSBC ATM. And sure enough, they find
Nasir there, leaning against a taxi. Soon a silver grey Opel Astra cruises
into the drive-in ATM. The driver inserts a card into the ATM. Sheikh
walks up to him and then gets into the car. Within seconds, the Opel is
surrounded by Ubale and his men. They identify themselves and demand that
the driver do the same. "I am Fardeen Khan," says the Boston-educated
29-year-old meekly. Ubale does not need to be told that he has apprehended
one of Bollywood's upcoming heroes.
Ubale could well have been the anti-narcotics
policeman that Fardeen's father Feroz Khan played in Jaanbaaz. As an upright
officer he goes ahead and arrests his coke-sniffing younger brother Anil
Kapoor from a discotheque. Only, this was for real. Sadly for Fardeen,
he was, as it were, the wrong person at the wrong time. His arrest was
small compensation for Ubale who had missed the bigger haul and the bigger
fish-the pop singer-politician pair believed to be doing coke frequently.
The recovery of 9 gm of cocaine from Fardeen's
car, however, had its own tale to tell. "The circumstances are against
me," says Fardeen who was taken into custody for questioning along
with Sheikh and Tony Gomes, another supplier in the chain. Feroz claims
his son is not a cocaine addict but "has tried the drug three or
four times, mostly under the influence of friends". With fatherly
indulgence, he passes it off as his son's celebration at his film Pyar
Tune Kya Kiya doing well at the box office.
The NCB too referred to Fardeen as an "occasional
user", an observation corroborated by the fact that unlike veteran
sniffers who usually dial a set of mobile numbers for a dose, or send
their valets and drivers to collect the white powder, Fardeen, a "novice",
had risked meeting Sheikh himself. Released on a Rs 20,000 bail on May
10, Fardeen could be slapped with a year's imprisonment-as against 10
years for peddlers-a fine or both under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances Act, 1985.
While the star's case will take its own course,
what the NCB is banking on are the peddlers in custody. Vital links in
a shady conduit, Sheikh and Gomes, it believes, could lead them to crucial
information. In their confession the two have only claimed that they supplied
coke to many Bollywood personalities, including Jackie Shroff, Aditya
Panscholi and Dimple Kapadia-people who have publicly campaigned against
drugs. "The charges are definitely not true," says Twinkle Khanna
on behalf of her mother Dimple who is away in the US. "I have seen
my mother going through ups and downs but not taking drugs." Panscholi
too denies ever taking cocaine. "I smoked dope during my college
days, just for the heck of it. But cocaine? Never," he asserts. As
does Shroff: "I am out of it now. Health is true wealth for me."
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