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CBI issues summons to Sameer Wankhede, asks him to appear tomorrow
People familiar with the development said Wankhede, named as primary accused in the corruption case filed last week, has been summoned at CBI’s Mumbai office
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has issued summons to Sameer Wankhede, former zonal director of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), asking him to appear before it on Thursday in connection with its probe into demand of ₹25 crore bribe from actor Shah Rukh Khan for not framing his son Aryan Khan in a drug case.
People familiar with the development said Wankhede, named as primary accused in the corruption case filed last week, has been summoned at CBI’s Mumbai office.
The interrogation of Wankhede, said an officer, will focus on the aspects of the controversial raid at Cordelia cruise ship such as allowing a ‘freehand’ to a private person - Kiran Gosavi - in NCB’s raid operation, demand of ₹25 crore from Khan’s family, which was settled at ₹18 crore, deletion of names of suspects from original NCB ‘information note’ and allowing some individuals after the raid to ‘walk free’.
Also Read: Who is KP Gosavi — ‘independent witness’ who planned to extort ₹25 crore from Aryan Khan?
The Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer was shunted out of the NCB last year and the government ordered a probe against him based on a vigilance enquiry, which revealed multiple irregularities in the conduct of the NCB’s raiding team led by Wankhede on October 2, 2021.
Aryan was arrested by Wankhede and his team members on October 3, 2021, alleging that he was part of an international drug conspiracy but a secondary probe by a special enquiry team (SET) led by NCB’s deputy director general (DDG) Sanjay Kumar Singh established in May 2022 that the actor’s son was ‘innocent’ as he was not carrying any drugs on the Cordelia cruise.
CBI’s first information report (FIR) against Wankhede says that he had allowed a ‘free hand’ to Gosavi in a way that gave the impression that the latter (a witness during the raid) was an NCB officer.
Besides Wankhede, CBI FIR names former SP of NCB - Vishwa Vijay Singh, intelligence officer Ashish Ranjan, Gosavi and his aide Sanvile D’Souza.
Wankhede, according to CBI, “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”.
This was part of the conspiracy to extort ₹25 crore from Khan’s family for not framing his son, which was settled at ₹18 crore.
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 according to the declared income.
