Nineteen months after a Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) team led by its then zonal director Sameer Wankhede raided the Cordelia cruise in Mumbai and arrested actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan, among others, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked him and four others in a corruption case alleging that ₹25 crore was demanded from the actor for not framing his son in a drugs case.
Agency teams carried out raids at 29 locations in four cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur and Ranchi, including Wankhede’s residence.
Besides Wankhede, who was shunted out of the NCB last year after a vigilance enquiry found major discrepancies in the Cordelia raid, CBI has named Vishwa Vijay Singh, a superintendent of police (SP) rank officer, former intelligence officer Ashish Ranjan Prasad, Kiran Gosavi, who accompanied Wankhede’s team as a witness and later posted a picture with Aryan Khan in NCB’s custody, one Sanville D’Souza and unknown others in its first information report (FIR) filed on Thursday. Singh was removed from the NCB last month in another case, as reported by HT.
They have been charged under multiple sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act as well as criminal conspiracy and extortion by threatening under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
“It has been alleged that the said officials of NCB of Mumbai zone, in order to obtain undue advantage from the persons/others in the Cordelia case, had entered into criminal conspiracy with others and had allegedly obtained undue advantage in the form of bribes from the alleged accused (referring to Aryan Khan),” a CBI spokesperson said in a statement.
{{/usCountry}}“It has been alleged that the said officials of NCB of Mumbai zone, in order to obtain undue advantage from the persons/others in the Cordelia case, had entered into criminal conspiracy with others and had allegedly obtained undue advantage in the form of bribes from the alleged accused (referring to Aryan Khan),” a CBI spokesperson said in a statement.
{{/usCountry}}“It has also been alleged that the said persons entered into conspiracy in order to extort an amount of ₹25 crore (approximately) from the family members of the alleged accused (referring to Aryan Khan) by threatening them of the accusation of offences of possession of narcotics substances as per the alleged directions of Sameer Wankhede being the supervisory officer (of the case),” the spokesperson said.
A token amount of ₹50 lakh as bribe was already obtained, CBI added. HT texted Wankhede for a comment but there was no response till the time of going to press.
Officials familiar with the CBI probe said Wankhede, who was moved to the office of director general of taxpayers’ services (DGTS) in Chennai after the irregularities were established, will soon be called for questioning in the case.
The CBI probe was ordered by the Centre based on a NCB vigilance enquiry report, which established that a demand of ₹25 crore bribe was made from Shah Rukh Khan, through his manager Seema Dadlani.
Wankhede, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer who has since been transferred from NCB, led a team of officers, including Singh, and some witnesses on the night of October 2, 2021 to raid Cordelia ship at the International Cruise Terminal at Green Gate off the Mumbai coast.
NCB claimed it seized 13 grams of cocaine, five grams of mephedrone, 21 grams of marijuana, 22 pills of MDMA (ecstasy), and ₹1.33 lakh in cash from the vessel. It also intercepted 14 people, and after hours of interrogation, placed Aryan Khan (24), Arbaaz Merchant (26), and Munmum Dhamecha (28) under arrest on October 3. Subsequently, the agency arrested 17 more people in connection with the raid.
Relying on WhatsApp chats, Wankhede’s team had claimed the accused were part of a larger conspiracy. It alleged that Aryan Khan was in touch with some foreign drug supplier and the chats referred to “hard drugs” and “bulk quantities”. However, rejecting NCB’s claims, a single bench of justice Nitin W Sambre of the Bombay high court noted in October last year that there was no evidence to suggest existence of any conspiracy.
HT was first to report that a special investigation team (SIT), headed by deputy director general Sanjay Kumar Singh, formed by NCB to reinvestigate the raids, did not find evidence to suggest that the actor’s son was part of a larger drugs conspiracy or an international drugs trafficking syndicate. The SIT also found several irregularities in the dramatic raid.
The SIT filed a charge sheet against 14 people in May last year but gave a clean chit to Aryan Khan, saying that the actor’s son was never in possession of drugs hence there was no need to take his phone and check his chats. The chats also did not suggest Khan was part of any international syndicate.
Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness in October 3 cruise raid off Mumbai coast, has claimed in an affidavit as well as in subsequent interactions with media persons that he overheard his employer, KP Gosavi, talking on the phone to someone by the name Sam D’Souza after Aryan Khan was brought to the NCB office after the raid. He claimed that Gosavi talked about extorting ₹25 crore to settle the case, which could be negotiated to ₹18 crore, as they have to give ₹8 crore to Sameer Wankhede.
Sail has also claimed that he saw Gosavi meeting Shah Rukh Khan’s manager and that he was asked to sign 9-10 blank pages in Wankhede’s presence after the cruise raids. Gosavi is on the run and Mumbai police have issued a look-out notice against him.