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CBI books Sameer Wankhede, officer who arrested Aryan Khan; raids at 29 locations
The agency raided the premises of Wankhede and 28 other locations in four cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur and Ranchi belonging to two other public servants and two private persons as part of its probe
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a corruption case against Sameer Wankhede, former zonal director of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), who led the controversial raid on the Cordelia cruise ship in October 2021 in Mumbai and arrested actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan, among others, people familiar with the development said on Friday.
Those named in CBI FIR include Sameer Wankhede, removed NCB SP Vishwa Vijay Singh, ex-intelligence officer of NCB Ashish Ranjan, the alleged witness in Cordelia raid Kiran Gosavi and Sanville D’Souza.
The agency raided the premises of Wankhede and 28 other locations in four cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur and Ranchi belonging to two other public servants and two private persons as part of its probe.
People cited above said that the NCB had written to the CBI to investigate Wankhede and others for bribery.
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Wankhede, who was shunted out of the NCB last year after a special investigation team (SIT) found anomalies in the Cordelia raid and gave a clean chit to Aryan Khan, is currently posted in the office of director general of taxpayers’ services (DGTS) in Chennai.
Last week, as reported by HT, NCB had removed from service a superintendent of police rank officer – Vishwa Vijay Singh from the agency.
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 to have 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 (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 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 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 persons in May last year but gave a clean chit to Aryan, 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.
