NCB’s Sanjay Singh, who gave clean chit to Aryan Khan, takes voluntary retirement

Sanjay Kumar Singh told HT that he had decided to take voluntary retirement due to personal reasons. “I have had a fruitful career,” he said

Updated on: Apr 18, 2024, 22:09:26 IST

By Neeraj Chauhan

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NEW DELHI: Sanjay Kumar Singh, the Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who led a special investigation team (SIT) of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to probe Aryan Khan’s role in the Cordelia drugs raid case and found him innocent, has taken voluntary retirement from the service for “personal reasons”.

Sanjay Singh was previously the commissioner of police, Bhubaneswar, and had served in the Central Bureau of Investigation (ANI/FILE PHOTO)

Singh, a 1996 batch IPS officer from the Odisha cadre, was deputy director general (DDG) of NCB at Mumbai. Singh applied for VRS on February 29 this year, almost a year before he was to retire from service in January 2025. His request was approved by the state government on April 16.

“I have had a fruitful career. I decided to take voluntary retirement due to personal reasons,” Singh told HT.

Known to follow the law in letter and spirit, Singh handled several high-profile cases during his stint in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) between 2008 and 2015, including corruption charges against former Haryana chief minister O P Chautala, Commonwealth Games 2010 corruption case, irregularities in Medical Council of India (MCI), and a recruitment scandal in Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) among others.

Singh’s boss, NCB director general SN Pradhan said: “Sanjay Singh is a committed professional who excelled at every place he worked. His investigation skills were very thorough. It’s a loss for the NCB but during his time here, he has been an asset for us”.

People who have worked closely with him said Sanjay Kumar was known to build his cases against the accused with strong documentary, corroborative and scientific evidence, and followed legal procedures and guidelines laid down by various courts to take a case to its logical conclusion.

Before joining the NCB in January 2021, Singh was Odisha’s additional director general of police overseeing the state police’s task force against drugs. He has previously served as commissioner of police, Bhubaneswar.

During his probe into the Aryan Khan case, Singh made multiple visits to Mumbai to oversee the probe by his team and scrutinised all statements, following which the special team concluded that there was no evidence to charge the youngster.

The probe convinced the Centre to recommend action against NCB’s former zonal director Sameer Wankhede and dropping drug trafficking charges against six people, including Aryan Khan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Neeraj Chauhan
Neeraj Chauhan is a senior journalist with Hindustan Times and an investigative reporter specialising in national security, terrorism, organised crime, narcotics, corruption, financial crime and complex investigations. With over 21 years of experience across Hindustan Times, The Times of India, The Indian Express and The Pioneer, he has built deep expertise in India’s internal security and law-enforcement landscape. Neeraj has extensively covered India’s principal investigative, intelligence and security agencies, including the NIA, CBI, ED, IB, R&AW, MHA and other central security forces. His work has included deeply reported investigations into terrorism, terror financing, cross-border crime, narcotics trafficking, cybercrime, financial fraud and political and corporate corruption. He has reported on some of the most significant terror attacks and security developments in India over the past two decades, including the Delhi serial blasts, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the 2019 Pulwama terror attack and the recent Pahalgam attack. His reporting has also chronicled the rise and decline of the Indian Mujahideen, the activities and subsequent crackdown on the Popular Front of India (PFI), Islamist extremist networks, the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, insurgencies in the Northeast and Maoist violence. Some of Neeraj’s major breaking stories are in Aryan Khan drug case, Sushant Singh Rajput suicide, interception of a 3,000-kg Afghan heroin consignment worth about ₹21,000 crore at Mundra port, Sri Lanka easter bombings, Aarushi-Hemraj murders in Noida, 2G scam, coal block allocation scam, AgustWestland VVIP chopper deal and major bank frauds and extradition cases involving Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya. His reporting is marked by an ability to cultivate sources, analyse confidential and complex documents, and follow investigations over several years—from the initial breakthrough to chargesheets, trials and international legal proceedings. He specialises in making complicated security and investigative developments accessible while examining their wider implications for governance and public policy. A Chevening South Asia Journalism Programme Fellow at the University of Westminster, Neeraj also spent time at the Financial Times as part of the fellowship. He was also a Robert Bosch Media Ambassadors India-Germany Fellow, studying at the University of Tübingen and working with Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin. He has previously taught investigative journalism and crime reporting as a guest faculty member at the Times School of Journalism. Over more than two decades, Neeraj has established himself as an authoritative voice on India’s national security and investigative landscape, with his reporting closely followed by officials, investigators, lawyers, policymakers and readers seeking insight into some of the country’s most complex and consequential developments.Read More