Sameer Wankhede part of plot to kidnap Aryan: Nawab Malik

Addressing a press conference on Sunday, Malik said the NCB’s raid on Goa-bound cruise ship Cordelia on October 2 was “a plot to kidnap Aryan Khan for ransom, of which Mohit Bharatiya Kamboj was the mastermind.”

Maharashtra minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik on Sunday called Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker Mohit Bharatiya (aka Mohit Kamboj) the “mastermind” of the cruise ship drug raid case in which actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan is one of 20 persons accused, and said that the Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede was part of a plot to “kidnap” Aryan for ransom.

Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik addresses a press conference at Kurla in Mumbai on Sunday. (PTI)

Malik appealed to Shah Rukh Khan to come forward and support his fight against drugs: “I appeal to him not to get scared. If your child is kidnapped and ransom is sought and the parent pays it, he is the victim and not the accused.”

Addressing a press conference on Sunday, Malik said the NCB’s raid on Goa-bound cruise ship Cordelia on October 2 was “a plot to kidnap Aryan Khan for ransom, of which Mohit Bharatiya Kamboj was the mastermind.”

Kamboj was part of Wankhede’s “private army” which routinely extorted people for money by threatening them, Malik claimed and added that Wankhede set a trap for Aryan with the help of Kamboj’s brother-in-law, Rishabh Sachdeva.

The minister claimed Wankhede had met Kamboj at a graveyard in suburban Oshiwara.

“But, because of his (Wankhede’s) good luck, we couldn’t get the footage since police’s CCTV was not functioning. Hence, out of fear, Wankhede had lodged a false complaint that he was being stalked,” Malik said.

Wankhede wrote a letter to the Mumbai police commissioner on October 24 stating that he was being followed, and sought police protection.

Wankhede on Sunday responded to these allegations saying that he was a regular visitor to the Oshiwara graveyard as his mother was buried there and added that there are several CCTV cameras in the vicinity from which footage could be acquired to disprove Malik’s claims.

Aryan Khan was taken to the cruise party by Pratik Gabba and Aamir Furniturewala, Malik claimed, adding that Sachdeva, Gabba and Furniturewala were let off by the NCB.

Fourteen people were detained by the NCB following the raid on October 2, but six were eventually let off the following day, while eight people were arrested.

“Kashiff Khan, an organiser of the cruise party, had tried hard to invite state minister Aslam Shaikh and children of our top ministers to come to the party,” Malik said.

Kashiff Khan, a senior executive of Fashion TV, had told news agency ANI in October that while he was present on the cruise, he was not an organiser of the party. “The organisers are from Delhi and they have already been detained and questioned. I have nothing to do with them,” he had said.

“There was a greater conspiracy to frame leaders from the ruling party and the people connected to the film industry. They wanted to defame the state government by using the central agency,” Malik said on Sunday.

Shaikh, who is the textiles minister in the state government, did not respond to repeated phone calls and messages seeking his comment.

“Besides cases of Aryan Khan and Sameer Khan (Malik’s son-in-law), all 26 cases (being probed by the NCB) should be given to the SIT for a probe. If there is an attempt to scare me by putting my son-in-law’s case for re-examination, let me be clear that I am not scared,” Malik said.

Malik’s son-in-law, Sameer Khan, was arrested in January this year by the NCB in an alleged drugs case, and was granted bail in September.

Kamboj on Sunday denied the allegations.

“[Nawab Malik] is trapped in his own net. He himself has admitted that the ruling party leaders and their children are involved in a drug racket. He said Kashiff Khan invited Aslam Shaikh to the party, which means they knew each other. Now it is the responsibility of Nawab to throw more light on the entire link between peddlers and the ruling party leaders,” he said.

Kamboj on Saturday had held a press conference where he targeted the NCP and alleged that an NCP worker named Sunil Patil and based in Dhule was the “mastermind” of the drug raid case. Patil had given the number of Kiran Gosavi, an independent witness in the case, to a certain Sam D’Souza and told him that Gosavi will coordinate with the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Kamboj claimed.

Gosavi is currently under arrest in Maharashtra in a cheating case.

Patil, meanwhile, denied Kamboj’s claim on Sunday. He said the tip-off about the cruise drugs party was given to Manish Bhanushali, an NCB witness in the case, by Bhopal-based Neeraj Yadav, who is a BJP worker in Madhya Pradesh. Patil also appeared before the Mumbai Police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Sunday evening to record his statement, an official said.

Prabhakar Sail, another independent witness in the case, and Gosavi’s employee had claimed in a notarised affidavit released on October 23 that Gosavi and D’Souza were involved in an extortion attempt.

Malik on Sunday also released an audio clip of a conversation between Sanville (Sam) D’souza and NCB officer VV Singh and asked why the NCB had not arrested D’souza, an accused in a drug case, yet.

BJP leader and former minister Ashish Shelar has demanded an FIR against Sunil Patil and a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe in the entire matter. “The daily press conferences by Nawab Malik are an attempt to shield people involved in the drug racket and police transfers. Patil is part of an interstate racket which needs to be investigated by an agency like CBI,” he said.

BJP leader Ram Kadam said Nawab Malik was on the back foot after realising that the ruling party’s link to the drug case had been exposed. “...In fact, the ruling party leaders were involved in extortion from Shah Rukh Khan through Kiran Gosavi. The extortion racket was being run by the ruling party leaders. Now, the state government should seek a CBI inquiry in the drug case. It should also conduct a narco test on Kiran Gosavi and others,” he said.