After month in jail, Aryan Khan returns home to much fanfare

After month in jail, Aryan Khan returns home to much fanfare

Mohua Das & Mateen Hafeez TNN

Mumbai:31.10.2021

Aryan Khan finally returned home on Saturday morning to a hero’s welcome, two days after the Bombay high court granted him bail and almost a month of being lodged at Arthur Road Jail following his arrest in the drugson-cruise case.

Jail officials unlocked the bail box at 5.30am on Saturday to collect Aryan’s release order to initiate the process that had missed its deadline on Friday. While his father, actor Shah Rukh Khan, left home at 8am and managed to dodge the media glare—stationed inside his white Range Rover parked close to the prison ahead of his son’s release—the crowd of onlookers that grew by the minute cheered excitedly at a fleeting glimpse of Aryan, 23, as he emerged from a mini gate at 11.02am with SRK’s bodyguard Ravi Singh briskly escorting him into the SUV, ready to drive back home.

FREE AT LAST: Aryan Khan, 23, left Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai around 11am on Saturday, two days after he was granted bail

‘If we’ve been there for SRK in good times, we need to be with him now’

Fans also gathered outside Mannat, the Khans’ sea-facing bungalow. “If we’ve been there for Shah Rukh in the good times, it’s our responsibility to be here for him in the bad times,” said Aparna Agnihotri from Andheri, member of a fan club.

Fans burst crackers, waving banners that read ‘Stay Strong Prince Aryan’ and chants of “We love Shah Rukh”, even as security guards and a posse of policemen jostled to provide the actor’s car a safe passage back into the building.

If the crowd lined up on pavements outside Arthur Road jail kept the police on their toes, with barricades and ropes to keep onlookers within limits and an eye on suspected pickpockets following reports of at least seven mobile phone thefts outside the jail on Friday, it was a busy day for some of SRK’s biggest fans too.

As the wait for the star son’s arrival grew longer, a man kept the crowd intrigued with his “bhavishya vani” or fortune-telling for the Khan family while two others stopped by to regale fans with the quintessential SRK song ‘Tujhe dekha toh yeh jaana sanam’ on their shehnai and dafli.

“Aaj bahut din baad khushi ka mahaul hai,” said Lateef Khan, a 20-year-old from Kurla and member of Team Shah Rukh Khan, a fan club with more than 2 million followers. Upset at not being able to welcome back “Prince Khan” on Friday, he refused to go home and camped with a friend instead in order to board the 6am train for Aryan’s grand arrival.

Full report on www.toi.in

FAN FRENZY: Cops and guards struggled to control the crowd in a lane leading to Mannat, Shah Rukh Khan’s home, in Mumbai on Saturday