Bribery case: Sameer Wankhede appears before CBI in Mumbai

Wankhede who was the then Mumbai zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), had on the night of October 2, 2021 led a team of officers to raid the Cordelia cruise ship off the Mumbai coast. The NCB subsequently claimed to have seized 13 gm of cocaine, 5 gm of mephedrone, 21 gm of marijuana, 22 pills of MDMA and Rs 1.33 lakh cash during the raid. The agency arrested 17 people, including Aryan Khan, son of actor Shah Rukh Khan.

An independent witness in the 2021 Cordelia cruise ship “drug bust” case then allegedly demanded Rs 25 crore from the Bollywood actor’s family by threatening to falsely implicate Aryan in the case, a probe by the Special Enquiry Team (SET) of the NCB has revealed.

The investigation also found that after negotiation, the deal was finalised at Rs 18 crore, with Rs 50 lakh being given as token amount. It is on the basis of this investigation that the CBI filed an FIR against the members of the NCB team.

The SET probe also revealed that K P Gosavi, the independent witness who allegedly asked for Rs 25 crore, was made to seem like an NCB official and that the team led by Wankhede allegedly dropped the name of 17 persons as suspects.

On Monday, a CBI spokesperson said, “We have registered an FIR on May 11 against Sameer Wankhede, the then Zonal Director of NCB (Mumbai Zone Unit); Vishwa Vijay Singh, then Superintendent (NCB); Ashish Ranjan Prasad, then Intelligence Officer of the Mumbai Zonal Unit (NCB); K P Gosavi and Sanvile D’Souza (alleged witness) and other unknown persons.”

The spokesperson added, “On May 12, the CBI conducted searches at 29 locations across Mumbai, Delhi, Ranchi, Lucknow, Chennai and Guwahati, which led to recovery of incriminating material.”

The CBI FIR stated, “Further inquiries have also been done in the matters of allegations of criminal misconduct and corrupt practices of Wankhede and Prasad independently, which could not sufficiently justify their acquired assets as per their declared income. It has also come to the notice of the Vigilance Branch of NCB that Wankhede has not properly explained his foreign visits and had apparently misdeclared the expenditure on his foreign travels. He has also not declared the source of his foreign visits properly and it was also found that Wankhede has indulged himself in sale and purchase of expensive wristwatches with a private entity without intimating the department.”