Delhi HC grants Sameer Wankhede interim relief for five days in Aryan bribery case

Delhi HC granted interim relief to Sameer Wankhede after he was summoned by CBI in a bribery case linked to Aryan Khan drugs case.

 The Delhi high court on Wednesday granted interim relief to former Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) zonal director Sameer Wankhede after he was summoned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday in connection with a bribery matter linked to a drugs case in which he had tried to implicate Aryan Khan.

Sameer Wankhede was shunted out of NCB last year.

The high court’s relief came after the federal agency orally assured that it will not act against the Indian Revenue Service officer, who has been named as the prime accused in the corruption case filed by CBI last week, till Monday. The case pertains to an alleged demand of ₹25 crore from actor Shah Rukh Khan for not framing his son Aryan in the 2021 Cordelia cruise ship drugs case.

As the court was recording CBI counsel Nikhil Goel’s submission that the agency will not act against Wankhede till Monday, the lawyer said: “My IO (investigating office) is standing here. I don’t want anything to be recorded... If he (Wankhede) writes an email, he will get a response, come on Monday. I am here, he can come back tomorrow (if CBI acts against him) to my Lords.” The high court was hearing a petition by Wankhede, seeking a free and fair investigation in the matter. In the interim, Wankhede had sought a stay on CBI summons for Thursday.

Goel objected to the jurisdiction and told the court that the petition could not be filed in Delhi as the subject matter is from Maharashtra. He said only the case was registered by CBI in Delhi, but everything was forwarded to Mumbai.

Goel verbally assured the court that the agency would not act till Monday. Without getting into the merits, Wankhede withdrew his petition from the high court to approach the appropriate forum in Mumbai.

According to people familiar with the matter, Wankhede was summoned for a probe at the federal agency’s office in Mumbai. Wankhede’s interrogation, a CBI officer said, will focus on some key aspects of a controversial raid at Cordelia cruise ship on October 2, 2021 -- such as allowing “free hand” to a private person, Kiran Gosavi, who accompanied the probe team and even posted a photograph with Aryan in NCB custody; an alleged demand of ₹25 crore from the Khan family which was allegedly settled at ₹18 crore; deletion of names of suspects from an original NCB “information note”; and allowing some individuals to “walk free”.

Wankhede was shunted out of NCB last year and the government ordered a probe against him after a vigilance enquiry found major discrepancies in the Cordelia raid, led by him, in 2021. Aryan was among 20 people who were arrested after the dramatic raid on the cruise ship in Mumbai on October 2 that year.

While the NCB team alleged that Aryan was a part of a larger international drugs conspiracy, a secondary probe by a special investigation team led by NCB’s deputy director general (DDG) Sanjay Kumar Singh in May 2022 said the actor’s son was “innocent” and was not carrying any drugs on the ship. HT was first to report on the SIT’s findings.

In its FIR against Wankhede last week, CBI alleged he had allowed a “free hand” to Gosavi in a way that gave the impression that the latter was an NCB officer.

Besides Wankhede, former NCB superintendent of police (SP) Vishwa Vijay Singh, former intelligence officer Ashish Ranjan Prasad, Gosavi and his aide Sanvile D’Souza have been named in the FIR. They have been charged under multiple sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act as well as for criminal conspiracy and extortion by threatening under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Wankhede, according to the federal agency, “in the capacity of supervisory officer had directed to take Gosavi and Prabhakar Sail as the independent witnesses in the proceedings against the accused and directed Singh to let Gosavi handle the accused while taking him to NCB office, thereby allowing a freehand to Gosavi and others in order to create such a visual impression of Gosavi having the custody of the accused and escorting/dragging him towards NCB office”.

CBI added that this was part of a conspiracy to extort ₹25 crore from Khan’s family, which was settled at ₹18 crore, for not framing Aryan in the case.

A token amount of ₹50 lakh was, in fact, taken by Gosavi but later a part of this amount was returned, the FIR said.

As part of its probe, CBI is investigating the assets acquired by Wankhede and his family, which officials say are not justified as per his declared income.