New Delhi: Former NCB officer Sameer Wankhede did not appear before the CBI for questioning on Thursday in connection with the alleged demand of Rs 25 crore bribe from superstar Shah Rukh Khan. The officers provided this information. It is alleged that Wankhede and others had demanded a bribe for not implicating his son Aryan Khan in the 2021 Cordelia cruise ship drug bust case. The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) did not name Aryan Khan in the charge sheet in the case due to lack of evidence against him. Sources said Wankhede had offered to appear before the agency on Thursday when a case was registered against him and four others for allegedly trying to take bribe from Shah Rukh Khan.
He said Wankhede did not turn up for questioning on Thursday and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) would decide the future course of action. Officials said a Special Investigation Team (SET) of the NCB had pointed out several lapses and irregularities in the operation on the cruise ship carried out under the “surveillance” of Wankhede.
The NCB had alleged that KP Gosavi and his associate Prabhakar Sail, now deceased, were included as independent witnesses in the cruise ship raid on October 2, 2021, on the instructions of Wankhede. Gosavi, his associate Sanvil D’Souza and others had entered into a conspiracy to extort Rs 25 crore from Aryan’s family members “by threatening them to charge them with offenses of possession of narcotics”, the FIR in the case said.
To release him, Gosavi and D’Souza negotiated to reduce the amount to Rs 18 crore and even collected a token of Rs 50 lakh and later returned a part of the amount. Aryan Khan, who was formally arrested by the NCB on October 3, 2021 following a cruise ship raid a day earlier, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 28 after spending 25 days in jail. But due to lack of evidence, his name was not included in the list of accused in the charge sheet of NCB.
The SET, in its findings, which are now part of the FIR, said that Aryan Khan and other suspects were brought to the NCB office on October 2, 2021, in Gosavi’s private vehicle. Wankhede had immediately directed Gosavi to be taken up as a supervisory officer. In the FIR it has been said that in the proceedings against the accused in the drug recovery case, Cell as an independent witness.
He had instructed VV Singh, the then Superintendent of NCB, to “handle the accused” while taking Gosavi to the NCB office, allowing him and others a “free hand” to create the impression that Gosavi had the accused have custody of. Said this.
“It appears that the presence of the independent witness Gosavi in the vicinity of the accused persons was deliberately created in such a way as to give an impression that Gosavi was an NCB personnel despite being an NCB personnel to handle the custody of the accused persons.” Said FIR.
Gosavi was allowed to be present with the accused persons, allowed to come to the NCB office after the raid, and took liberty to click selfies and record the voice note of one of the accused. According to officials, this position allowed Gosavi and D’Souza to enter into a “conspiracy” with others to allegedly demand bribe from Shah Rukh Khan.