Despite several drug busts to his name, why Sameer Wankhede is no stranger to controversy

The 2008-batch IRS officer — with stints in the NIA, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), before being loaned as Director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB)’s Mumbai Zone — was no stranger to controversy, or celebrities.

However, his stock has gone southwards ever since the Cordelia case, which saw allegations of corruption against him, enquiries, intra-department rivalries and eventually being shunted out of NCB and Mumbai and posted to Chennai as Director General of Analytics and Risk Management in May 2022. Earlier this year, the transfer order was set aside by the Central Administrative Tribunal where Wankhede had appealed it.

During his stint as a Customs officer at Mumbai international airport, he had acted against Shah Rukh, who in 2016 was stopped for carrying excess baggage and fined Rs 1.5 lakh duty.

At the Customs and later Service Tax Department, he also crossed paths with Anurag Kashyap, Vivek Oberoi, Mika Singh and Ram Gopal Verma.

Before he moved to the NCB from the DRI in 2020, Wankhede, the son of a police officer, was a well-known name in Mumbai.

Sources said he was brought in specifically in the wake of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and the cascading allegations against his girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, due to his work on drug seizures at the DRI.

“He was transferred as he has an excellent network of informants when it comes to narcotics,” says a senior NCB official.

After Wankhede took over, the inconspicuous NCB office in south Mumbai became the buzzing heart of the city, with one celebrity after another being called for questioning in the Chakraborty case, including Deepika Padukone, Shraddha Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan and Rakul Preet Singh.

Questions were also raised about the NCB’s apparent focus on cases involving small drug quantities but the accused were high-profile. As per data provided by the NCB to The Indian Express, of the 30 cases it registered from September 2020 — when Wankhede took over — to February 2021, in at least 12, the amount seized was “small”, as compared to “intermediate” or “large” seizures.

Many asked why the NCB, a central anti-narcotic agency, was going after even cases of consumption, such as the one involving comedian Bharti Singh. An officer of the Mumbai Police said, “Even our constables hardly do consumption cases.” Prior to Wankhede joining, a majority of the NCB’s operations were related to raiding factories producing mephedrone on the outskirts of Mumbai.

In an interview to The Indian Express in February 2021, Wankhede had said their strategy was to nip drugs at all levels — from factories to consumption. “You see our record, we have seized drugs from cocaine to ganja… busted labs and factories. We have dismantled suppliers and manufacturers.

Regarding consumers, is consuming legal in the country?… There is Section 27 of the NDPS Act… Anybody violating the Act, we are taking action, the manufacturer, the factory guy, the peddler, the consumer. When the law prohibits it, how can we allow its use? Secondly, in order to attack the drug menace, we need to have a consolidated approach, targeting each and every evader.”

In the Rhea Chakraborty case, there were other question marks over Wankhede’s intentions. One of those arrested, Kshitij Prasad, associated with film production company Dharmatic Productions, told the court that Wankhede had told him to implicate his boss Karan Johar and other film stars like Ranbir Kapoor, Arjun Rampal and Dino Morea, if he wanted to be let off.

Wankhede denied these allegations. Eventually two chargesheets were filed against Prasad, who is currently out on bail, as is Chakraborty.

Once the Chakraborty case was behind him, the NCB conducted several operations, of which 12 local gangs as well as networks run by

Nigerian nationals were neutralised. To highlight how busy Wankhede was, the FIR against Aryan and others in the alleged drug bust on a cruise liner was the 94th registered by the NCB in Mumbai and Goa in 2021; against 35 in 2019; 25 in 2018, 30 in 2017; and 23 in 2016.

Later, Wankhede along with his team at the NCB got the Home Minister’s medal for “excellence in investigation”.

Even his bitter critics conceded that Wankhede today has one of the most enviable networks of informants and has dealt a major blow to the narcotics network in Mumbai as well as Goa, which also comes under his unit.

However, it’s not just the names involved that find Wankhede in the cross-hairs. Just like in the Rhea Chakraborty case, his measures came under a cloud in Aryan Khan’s arrest, especially his involvement of a person with BJP links and a private investigator facing cheating charges in the raid.

Over the weekend, NCP leader Nawab Malik came out with fresh allegations, saying several people, including one with BJP links, had been let off by the NCB after the alleged drug bust on the cruise ship. The NCB denied the allegations.

Malik’s son-in-law Sameer Khan had been incidentally arrested by the NCB in connection with a narcotics case earlier this year and got bail after around six months. Malik has denied his claims are linked to this.

Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant, who had also questioned Wankhede’s measures, said the NCB under him is “doing the work of the BJP government”.

“Several questions have been raised by us but the NCB has not answered them.” About Wankhede’s success against drug gangs, Sawant added, “That is the job of the NCB, so nothing special in that. Even Mumbai Anti-Narcotics Cell carries out seizures.”

Officers have spoken about how much of a no-nonsense, hardworking person Wankhede is, always at work on some operation in his third-floor office. Wankhede had in the past spoken about missing out on time with his twin daughters. His wife Kranti Redkar is a well-known Marathi actress.