Prabhakar Sail, NCB witness in Aryan Khan drug case, dies of heart attack at 36

NCB panch witness in the cruise ship drug raid case, Prabhakar Sail, died of a heart attack at his Mumbai residence Friday afternoon.

MUMBAI: Prabhakar Sail, an important panch witness in the high-profile cruise ship drug raid case of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), died of a heart attack at his residence in Mahul area in Chembur Friday afternoon.

Prabhakar Sail was an important witness in the high-profile cruise ship raid case involving actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan. NCB later termed him as ‘hostile’. (File)

His lawyer, advocate Tushar Khandare confirmed the news and added that he breathed his last at 4pm.

“He was just 36 years of age and very young to die. He was under stress due to unemployment. He was jobless for a long time. Some of us tried our best to get him some work, but in vain. Because of this he was under tremendous mental pressure and that could be one of the factors that may have triggered the heart attack,” said advocate Khandare.

Sail is survived by his mother, wife and two kids.

Though Sail was an important witness in the drug raid case involving actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan, NCB had termed him as “hostile” in view of his affidavit, levelling indirect allegations of corruption against the then NCB zonal director Sameer Wankhede, who had headed the raid.

Acting on a specific tip-off, a team of NCB officials, headed by the agency’s Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede, on October 2 searched for certain passengers slated to take a holiday cruise to Goa from the International Cruise Terminal at Green Gate in Mumbai.

Kiran P Gosavi and Prabhakar Sail were two panch witnesses to the recoveries made from five of the nine persons apprehended by the NCB team at the cruise terminal and the cruise ship. Six gram Charas was purportedly seized from Aryan Khan’s friend Arbaaz Merchant and 13 gm Cocaine, 10 gm Charas, 5 gm MD, 10.62 gm Ecstasy or MDMA was allegedly seized from four Delhi residents.

Sail, however, made startling revelations in his affidavit sworn on October 23, 2021 before a notary. In the affidavit, Sail claimed that he overheard discussion of his employer Kiran P Gosavi and another person on phone about proposing a ₹25 crore deal and settling at about ₹18 crore. “You put a bomb of 25 crores and let’s settle at 18 final, because we have to give 8 crores to Sameer Wankhede,” the affidavit quoted.

The affidavit added that at about 9.45am on October 3, Gosavi met Shah Rukh Khan’s manager, Pooja Dadlani, along with one Sanville Adrian D’Souza alias Sam D’Souza outside Big Bazaar at Lower Parel. They met Dadlani in her car and left the place after about 15 minutes. Later in the day, when they were at Gosavi’s Vashi residence, Gosavi asked Sail to go and collect cash at Tardeo signal and when he went there in Gosavi’s car, a person who came in a white car handed over two cash-filled bags to him, stated the affidavit. Sail then brought the money back to Vashi. In the evening, Sail said, Gosavi asked him to hand over the cash of ₹50 lakh to Sam. Sail, accordingly, returned the cash-filled bags to Sam at a five-star hotel in Mumbai, where Sam counted the cash and found it to be ₹38 lakh.