Cordellia drugs case: CBI court denies interim protection to Sanville D’souza

Sanville D'souza, accused of attempting to broker a deal between then Narcotics Control Bureau officials and actor Shah Rukh Khan, has been denied interim protection by a special Central Bureau of Investigation court. D'souza claims he was tortured and illegally detained by the NCB's special enquiry team to get his confession. The court will pass its order on his plea for anticipatory bail on Wednesday. The CBI opposed the plea, saying D'souza had failed to attend its probe and had not given any reasonable grounds that he had been falsely implicated.

The special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Friday refused to grant interim protection to Sanville D’souza, who was booked by the agency for allegedly trying to broker a ₹25-crore deal between then Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officials and actor Shah Rukh Khan in exchange for letting off his son Aryan in the Cordellia cruise drugs bust case.

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Among the five people against whom the CBI had registered a case on May 11 was also NCB’s former Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede.

D’souza has sought anticipatory bail claiming that he was tortured and illegally detained for six days by the NCB’s special enquiry team (SET), which probed the allegations of extortion and irregularities in the drugs case investigation, to get his confession.

The court said it would pass order on D’souza’s plea on Wednesday.

D’souza, who claims himself to be a business consultant, has said in his plea that he had appeared before the SET on November 2 last year, but he was illegally detained there till November 8. During this illegal custody, he was mentally and physically tortured to give a confession, his lawyer said and added that his questioning began only after Shah Rukh Khan had visited the SET office.

His lawyer also argued that the Mumbai police had investigated the extortion angle but had found nothing. “He is ready to appear before the CBI provided, he gets protection from arrest,” the plea added.

The CBI, however, opposed the bail plea, saying he may have appeared before the SET, but that was an internal enquiry and that could not be an excuse to not attend the CBI probe.

Advocates P K B Gaikwad and Ashish Bilgaiyan, appearing for the agency, said the accused had not mentioned reasonable grounds that he had been falsely implicated in the case.

There was a specific allegation that he had entered into a criminal conspiracy to extort ₹25 crore from the actor, the lawyers said and added that D’Souza had no regard for law as he failed to join investigation even after notices were issued to him on May 24 and 26.