l Mumbai, October 7 (PTI): A court here on Thursday sent Aryan Khan, the son of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, and seven others in judicial custody in connection with the alleged seizure of banned drugs from a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast.

l Mumbai (PTI): The police accepted books from Aryan Khan’s mother Gauri Khan to be given to her son in custody, but said ‘no’ to giving him the food which she had brought along for her son now smarting under public gaze following his arrest.

THERE is no doubt that the Aryan Khan episode is going to assume terrible dimensions for the Shah Rukh Khan family not just for now but for all the time to come. Eventually, the Khans may be able to gloss over the episode and wait for time to act as a healer. No matter all that, it is obvious that the reputation of both, SRK and Gauri Khan, has been severely dented -- beyond all the future glossing over.

Frankly, this must happen -- not just in the case of the Khans but also in the case of every so-called big shot who himself or herself or his or her family gets embroiled in such episodes. That is the only way to fight off the social filth that has devested many a home in the country in the last few years as countless people appear to be taking to drugs as a way of life. All the people who turn to life of vice -- and drugging is certainly a vice beyond question -- must be made to suffer so that the society’s faith in virtue gets a much-needed boost.

The world has seen how the drugs dimension dominated the scene in the aftermath of the (suspected) suicide of actor Sushant Singh Rajput about two years ago. The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) went hammer and tongs to bust the whole drugs network devastating the elite society in Mumbai -- and elsewhere. Despite that, the drugs menace has continued to play havoc in the society.

This is proved far more clearly than anybody’s imagination with the Aryan Khan case. It is common knowledge that countless men and women from the country’s financial elite have already become victims of life of vice. Among such persons are not just the young men and women from financially elite families but also the elders in that stratum of the society.

Experts have offered several explanations about why such a degradation is taking place in the first place. Most of those explanations and intellectual essays appear more as attempts to offer some justification, howsoever tacit, of vice. But beyond all those, some experts have realised that a new culture of temptation is beginning to dominate the elite Indian social scene in the past few decades. Glitter and glamour are the two main driving forces that propel a lot of undesirable conduct among the financially elite strata of the society. The younger generations of these strata are exposed to undesirable influences that come from fat wallets that recognise no moral accountability in personal conduct. Much to the contrary, in increasing numbers, financial elite are allowing their younger generations to move without any sense of restraint and responsibility. That is the reason why we come across countless young people in expensive restaurants spending wasting money, showing off their filthy riches. Alcohol is the first step in vice -- almost always followed by drugs, as is the overall experience.

In this dirty domain, filmdom leads the show. Out there is those circles, the overall atmosphere is nauseating, to say the least. Never mind the external images of the stars, the families of many of them are often found steeped in vice of all kinds -- unholy wealth, wine and women, and made worse by drugs.

What makes things more terrible is the ugly nexus these people in filmdom develop with people in political power. Their younger generations, too, are found falling prey to temptation and vice in shocking numbers.

Ill-gotten money can be sited as one of the causes of this decline. There is certainly a lot of ill-gotten money in politics, in films, and also to a vast extent in business. When the money is accrued from immoral sources, it gives rise to vice and also crime. The Aryan Khan case -- and many other ones in similar situations -- points to this ugly, untoward reality of the our society.

It is only natural to expect the State and its agencies to get tougher and stem this social decline. On that count, we come across a massive disappointment, thanks to the fact that the operators of the State’s machinery are also agents of crime and vice -- again because of the ill-gotten money.

Of course, there are some good elements in the system and they try to stem the rot all right. However, factually speaking, their small numbers only make the filth appear more pronounced. Good stories may be written or told or filmed about these elements all right. Yet, all those do not change the social reality of terrible decline; they only accentuate the dirt. The Aryan Khans, the Riya Chakrabortys, and several other stars and starlets and their hangers-on and their protectors and financiers only add to the filth. The overall situation is very demeaning, with no practical solution in sight.

Can the cops -- in any form, whether in regular ranks or in agencies such as the NCB -- help in the control of this elite life of vice and crime?

The answer is both -- Yes, and No.

‘Yes’, because the cops alone have the wherewithal to combat this terrible menace.

And ‘no’ because they lack their own will, and the backing of the political will.

Yet, if at all there is going to be an actual solution to the problem, it will come from the domain of police and its different agencies. A parallel campaign of social cleansing will certainly make some difference. And if this is not attempted in all seriousness, the immoral prescription of drugs will destroy us beyond redemption.