HEAVY HAND OF THE LAW

The son of a Bollywood superstar is arrested in a drug bust on a cruise ship. But the case backfires, tarring the reputation of the investigating agency, the Narcotics Control Bureau. It also starts a debate on the need to amend laws on drugs consumption

- Kiran D. Tare

Like any entertainment industry across the world, Hindi cinema thrives on suspension of disbelief. It also helps Bollywood sell over 2 billion movie tickets a year. But in recent times, this trope has been outclassed by some frenetic real-life crime tales involving film folk. First, there was the sensational 2020 suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput; then, in September this year, the husband of a popular 1990s movie actress was arrested for allegedly running a soft porn racket. Weeks later came revelations that a conman had splurged crores wooing starlets with jewellery, fast cars and private jet rides. It thus somehow seemed plausible this October that the eldest son of a Bollywood superstar could be involved in the murky drugs business.

At 24, Aryan Khan is at an age when greatness is thrust upon most star kids. It’s the time for the ‘launch vehicle’, usually a big budgeter that vaults a star kid over the heads of thousands of other unpedigreed strugglers into industry orbit. The young Khan seemed destined for such a debut. Born into industry royalty, he had already been onscreen playing a younger version of his father Shah Rukh Khan in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001). He won a gold medal at a state-level Taekwondo competition in 2010, voiced the titular character Simba in the Hindi version of The Lion King in 2019, has been romantically linked with another star kid and, in 2020, got a degree from the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. His tryst with fame, though, was to follow a different narrative.