MUMBAI: Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Sameer Wankhede had claimed before the Delhi High Court on Wednesday that the October 2021 Cordelia cruise drug bust, in which filmstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was arrested, was probed by him and his team of officers at the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in Mumbai under the supervision of then NCB top brass, who had together “issued a specific plan of action”.
Mumbai, India - January 06, 2023: Sameer Wankhede, former Mumbai zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had summoned Wankhede to appear at the agency’s office on Thursday for questioning, which he failed to do, as “there is an interim protection against any coercive action for five days till Monday”, stated his lawyer Shubhi Srivasatava.
Meanwhile, Wankhede’s writ petition named at least three Deputy Director General-level officers and the then Director General (DG) of the NCB who were in the loop about Aryan Khan’s probe in real time.
Wankhede’s petition made the CBI, NCB and NCB’s Gnaneshwar Singh, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer working as the anti-narcotics agency’s Deputy Director General and Chief Vigilance Officer, as respondents.
The petition said both the NCB and Singh had directed him to supervise Aryan Khan’s alleged drug abuse case and that Wankhede’s every move was taken with the prior approval of Singh and other concerned superiors.
He claimed that Aryan Khan was arrested by NCB “after consultation and adhering to the Standard Operating Procedure by Singh and other superiors”. The petition further stated that Singh “acting as complainant, investigator, judge and a witness, all rolled into one, has been making such references to various authorities primarily to cover up his own conduct as the controlling superior of the writ petitioner while he was working in the office of NCB”.
Wankhede alleged that Singh, through the Special Enquiry Team (SET) set up in NCB, “tried to make out a false case of extortion” against him. NCB had set up the SET, he claimed, at Singh’s behest.
CBI, on May 12, had said that it had registered a corruption case against Wankhede, Vishwa Vijay Singh, then NCB superintendent, and Ashish Ranjan, then intelligence officer of the NCB’s Mumbai zonal unit, as well as private individuals K P Gosavi, Sanville D’Souza, and others, for allegedly conspiring to extort ₹25 crore from Shah Rukh Khan for not booking his son for possessing narcotics, and subsequently obtaining a bribe of ₹50 lakh from the actor.
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