Drugs case: NCB to continue questioning actor Ananya Panday today

Bollywood actor Ananya Panday will appear before the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) for the second day in a row on Friday for questioning in the drugs case in which superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan is behind the bars.

Ananya, the daughter of actor Chunky Panday, is scheduled to reach the NCB office in Mumbai around 11am during the day. The 22-year-old was interrogated for more than an hour by agency officers on Thursday regarding some relevant WhatsApp chats she had with Aryan.

She had come to the NCB office accompanied by her father and amid heavy police deployment and media glare, hours after a team of officers searched her home, seized her mobile phone and laptop and summoned her to record her statement. The NCB officials are yet to clarify about her role, if any, in the case.

Around the same time, another team from the anti-drugs agency visited Khan’s Bandra residence ‘Mannat’ to collect documents related to his son. This was a little after the actor briefly met Aryan, who is lodged in Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail, for the first time since his arrest in the drugs abuse case.

Aryan and a few others were held on October 3 after the NCB raided a Goa-bound cruise ship off the Mumbai coast and claimed to have seized drugs, including charas.

The Bombay High Court will hear the 23-year-old’s bail application on October 26.