CBI summons ex-NCB officer Sameer Wankhede in Rs 25 crore extortion case involving Aryan Khan

A 2008-batch IRS officer, Wankhede, who headed the NCB’s Mumbai zone, had led a team of officers to raid a ship off the Mumbai coast on the night of October 2, 2021. The NCB had 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 had arrested 17 people, including Aryan.

An independent witness in the 2021 Cordelia cruise ship “drug bust” case 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 a negotiation, the deal was finalised at Rs 18 crore, with Rs 50 lakh being taken as token amount. It is on the basis of this investigation that the CBI has 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 had 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 Vigilance Branch of NCB that Wankhede has not properly explained his foreign visits and had apparently mis-declared 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 wrist watches with a private entity without intimating the department.”