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
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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