New Delhi: Sameer Wankhede, the former Mumbai zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), “gave a free hand” to independent witness K.P. Gosavi and his aide to “extort” Rs 25 crore from the family of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan, the FIR filed by the CBI against the officer alleges.
Out of this sum, the FIR adds, an amount of Rs 50 lakh was taken to get Aryan off the hook.
Wankhede had shot to the headlines in 2021 when he arrested Aryan, among others, in an alleged drugs procurement and consumption case following a raid led by him on a cruise ship in Mumbai on 2 October that year.
The NCB had seized 13 grams of cocaine, five grams of mephedrone, 21 grams of marijuana, 22 pills of MDMA (ecstasy), and Rs 1.33 lakh in cash from the cruise vessel.
According to the FIR, a witness on the cruise ship, Prabhakar Sail, had alleged that the NCB had asked for Rs 25 crore to let off Aryan.
On Thursday, the CBI filed a case of corruption and criminal conspiracy against Wankhede for allegedly demanding a bribe to “settle the case” and for “owning assets beyond his source of income”.
The CBI started probing Wankhede after a detailed inquiry carried out by the vigilance department of the NCB indicted certain officers involved in the cruise ship raid.
According to the CBI’s FIR, a copy of which is with ThePrint, it was Wankhede who directed V.V. Singh, then superintendent in the NCB and part of the raid, to “let Gosavi handle the accused”.
The FIR further states that an amount of Rs 25 crore was sought but finally settled at Rs 18 crore. Out of this, Rs 50 lakh was taken as “token money” but a part of it was later returned, it adds.
“Wankhede in the capacity of immediate supervisory officer had directed to take Gosavi and Prabhakar Sail as independent witnesses in the proceedings against the accused and had also directed V.V. Singh to let Gosavi handle the accused while taking him to the NCB office, thereby giving a free hand to him (Gosavi),” the FIR says.
It adds that the accused were brought to the NCB office in the private vehicle of Gosavi intentionally to make him appear like an NCB official.
“Gosavi was allowed to be in the company of the accused and allowed to come to the NCB office after the raid which is against the norms for an independent witness. He took freedom to click selfies and also recorded a voice note of an accused,” the FIR states.
This, a CBI officer, said was done to give the impression that Gosavi was in a senior position at the NCB so that he could ask for a bribe.
Aryan, who spent almost a month in jail in the case, was given a clean chit by the NCB in May 2022.
The CBI’s FIR has been registered under sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act and names Wankhede, V.V. Singh, Ashish Ranjan, then intelligence officer in the NCB, Gosavi and Sanvile DSouza, another independent witness in the case.
Reacting to the allegations against Wankhede, his wife Kranti Redkar Wankhede told reporters Monday: “Everyone knows the allegations against him are wrong. These are just allegations and we are fully cooperating in the CBI proceedings. We have faith in law and order.”
FIR highlights ‘irregularities’
The NCB was initially investigating the cruise ship case, but after certain alleged “irregularities” surfaced, it was transferred to a Special Investigation Team (SIT) at agency headquarters, Delhi. The SIT took over the probe on 6 November 2021.
Wankhede was detached from his Mumbai posting and reinstated to the Department of Revenue Intelligence in early 2022 once his stint with the NCB ended on 31 December 2021.
According to a senior NCB officer, the entire case against Aryan Khan was found to be “motivated” by the vigilance department of the bureau.
The CBI FIR also claims that there were several irregularities in the cruise ship case and many of the suspects were “allowed to walk free”, while others were “fixed”.
“The inquiry revealed that names of certain suspects in the case were dropped from the first information note and the names of certain other accused were included subsequently through modification to suit the proceedings. The initial note contained 27 names and the modified one had 10 names,” the FIR states.
“A number of passengers were searched at the departure gate by Ashish Ranjan. During this, one of the suspects, Arbaaz Merchant (budding actor and Aryan’s friend), accepted that he is having charas hidden inside his shoes and the zip lock pouch was handed over to Ashish. The search of others who were suspected was done but it was not documented,” the FIR adds.
‘Property, expensive watches, foreign visits’
According to the CBI’s FIR, Wankhede owns assets beyond his declared income.
The NCB’s vigilance department had also stated after its probe that Wankhede had not properly explained his foreign visits and had “mis-declared the expenditure of his foreign travels”.
“He had not declared the source of his foreign visits properly. It was also found that Wankhede had indulged in sale and purchase of expensive wristwatches with a private entity, Viral Rajan, without intimating the department,” the CBI FIR states.
CBI sources had earlier told ThePrint that Wankhede allegedly owns five properties, including a residential flat in plush Bandra, and two commercial properties worth crores, including a bar.
Wankhede, the sources said, was getting close to Rs 1 lakh every month as salary in hand. They added that Wankhede also “sought favours from private parties”, which included some of those he had been probing.
“No public servant can run a parallel business like he was doing. He had started thinking he was bigger than the law. It is during the inquiry that all these things came to the fore,” a senior NCB officer told ThePrint.
“The CBI has conducted an inquiry of their own, following which they have registered a case against him,” the officer said.
The Enforcement Directorate is also likely to register a case to probe the money laundering aspect in the case, the officer added.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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