EVEN AS IRS officer Sameer Wankhede became one of the most talked about officers probing cases against celebrities and summoning actors to the NCB office, it was the raid on Cordelia cruise in which Aryan Khan, son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, was arrested that first saw allegations levelled against him by now incarcerated NCP leader Nawab Malik. Eventually, it would be the same case that would come to haunt Wankhede. The first allegations against him were of allowing two people with political links to leave the Cordelia cruise when others were arrested. Malik, whose son-in-law Sameer Khan had been arrested by NCB in a drugs case, then produced Prabhakar Sail, a witness in the Cordelia case, who said that he was made to sign blank sheets of papers at the NCB office. Sail, who claimed to be employed as a bodyguard of K P Gosavi, who accompanied Wankhede on the raid, said he overheard Gosavi say that Rs 8 crore was to be given to Wankhede on the night of the raid. Sail said that he was made a panch witness in the case. It was then that Sail made one of the most damning allegations that forms the core of the CBI FIR. Sail told the media that after the raid, while he was in the car with Gosavi going towards Lower Parel, the latter was speaking to one Sam D’Souza. “Till such time we reached Lower Parel K P Gosavi was talking to Sam on the phone and stated that you put a bomb of Rs 25 crore and let’s settle at 18 final because we have to give 8 crore to Sameer Wankhede,” Sail said. According to Sail, Gosavi and D'Souza had subsequently met a person named Pooja Dadlani who he said was Shah Rukh Khan's manager. Sail had claimed that Gosavi asked him to go to Tardeo traffic signal in south Mumbai and collect Rs 50 lakh, meant to be the token amount. He said that a white colour car no. 5102 came and gave me 2 bags filled with cash which I took to Vashi at his (Gosavi's) home and gave it to Kiran Gosavi.” While Wankhede denied the allegations, the Mumbai Police started an enquiry in the matter. However, when Dadlani did not turn up despite several summons, the enquiry did not go ahead. Later Malik alleged that Wankhede had used Gosavi as a panch who himself was a prior criminal which was not allowed. NCB had said that an enquiry was being conducted on bribery allegations in the matter. In November 2021 the NCB top brass moved six cases from Wankhede including the Aryan Khan case and an SIT was asked to investigate these cases. Two months later, Wankhede was moved out from NCB and returned to his parent cadre. In May 2022, he was moved to Chennai. Eventually, the chargesheet filed by the SIT in May 2022 said that there was no evidence against Aryan Khan, who was not chargesheeted in the case.
