High Court: No coercive action against Wankhede until Monday

Wankhede, who was personally present in the court, gave an undertaking to the court that he will attend CBI office in Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) on Saturday (May 20) at 11 am.

The Court prima facie observed that there was a bar under Section 17A of Prevention of Corruption Act which stipulated the inquiry to be conducted within four months of the alleged offence, which in this case occurred in 2021. The bench asked the respondents to file a reply to Wankhede’s contention that while CBI was required to take approval or sanction under PC Act within four months, it took over one year to do so, and the same was granted earlier this month.

Wankhede’s advocate Rizwan Merchant submitted that his client is being targeted on the ground that he committed activities beyond his job purview, and has been falsely implicated in the case in an act of vendetta by SET head Gnaneshwar Singh. “They want to put an IRS officer in jail, and that will demoralise the entire service force,” Merchant argued.

“Singh is complainant, investigator, evaluator of his own reports, judge of his own cause and witness of his allegations” and “he is investigating with malafide intent to cover up his tracks and prove him to be correct so as to avoid responsibility for his dubious acts ,” the plea claimed.

Advocate Kuldeep Patil for CBI argued that Wankhede could have availed an alternate remedy before the special CBI court seeking anticipatory bail instead of seeking protection from arrest in a plea seeking to quash the FIR.

Patil argued that CBI had followed due procedures and had also issued a notice under 41A (notice of appearance issued by investigating officer) of the Criminal Procedure Code, however the petitioner had not abided by the same.

“If he (Wankhede) co-operates, then we may not arrest him,” Patil added. He also said that the four-month period to avail sanction starts from the date of approval from the Centre to conduct an enquiry against the public servant, which was obtained two days earlier. Patil argued that if Wankhede cooperates with the probe, the CBI may not even arrest him and it will be the prerogative of the investigation officer, and there cannot be a blanket order against the arrest as the same would hamper investigation.

The high court will hear Wankhede’s plea next on Monday, May 22. The CBI FIR pertained to the alleged demand of a bribe of Rs 25 crore by Wankhede and others from family members of those who had been arrested in the 2021 Cordelia cruise ship drug-bust case that including actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.

A Special Enquiry Team (SET) of NCB had red-flagged several lapses and irregularities in the operation on the cruise ship conducted under Wankhede’s ‘monitoring’. The CBI had, thereafter, filed its FIR.