No Sameer Wankhede arrest without notice: Maharashtra govt to Bombay high court

The Maharashtra government on Thursday assured the court that no coercive action would be taken against the 42-year-old Indian Revenue Service officer without issuing him three working days advance notice.

Sameer Wankhede, the Mumbai zonal chief of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), whose alleged motives and methods have come under scrutiny of his own agency and the Mumbai Police sought and received protection from arrest from the Bombay high court on Thursday.

NCB Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede. (PTI)

The Maharashtra government on Thursday assured the court that no coercive action would be taken against the 42-year-old Indian Revenue Service officer without issuing him three working days advance notice.

Public prosecutor Aruna Pai, who represented the state, informed the division bench of justices Nitin Jamdar and Sarang Kotwal that the Mumbai police has received four complaints against Wankhede, including one from Prabhakar Sail, a panch (procedural investigation document) witness in the NCB’s cruise ship drug raid case in which actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was arrested along with several others.

Pai said the Mumbai police are conducted only a preliminary enquiry and assured the court that they will not take any coercive action against Wankhede without issuing him three working days advance notice.

Wankhede on Thursday, filed a petition, seeking a direction that all/any FIR(s) registered or proposed to be registered by the state government against him in relation to allegations of corruption be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation or the National Investigating Agency in view of “the malice, mala fides and ulterior motives of the political party in power in the state”.

Meanwhile, Kranti Redkar Wankhede, the wife Sameer Wankhede, wrote to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, seeking justice in the wake of the “attack on her family and her personal life”. Wankhede’s sister, Yasmeen, has filed a police complaint seeking registration of a first information report (FIR) against Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik for allegedly defaming her, a senior official said.