New Delhi: The CBI summoned former Mumbai NCB zonal director Sameer Wankhede for questioning on Thursday for allegedly seeking Rs 25 crore bribe for not framing actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son, Aryan Khan, in the Cordelia cruise ship drug bust case, news agency PTI reported.
Wankhede, who has been booked along with four others in the case, is likely to appear before the CBI in Mumbai, officials said.
According to details of the FIR, independent witness K P Gosavi and Prabhakar Sail, now deceased, were included by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the Cordelia cruise ship drug raid on October 2, 2021, on the directions of Wankhede.
The CBI FIR mentioned that this position “allowed KP Gosavi and his aide Sanvile D'Souza amongst others to enter into the conspiracy to extort an amount of Rs. 25 crores from the family members of the alleged 'accused', Aryan Khan by threatening them of the accusation of offences of possession of Narcotics substances.”
“This amount was finally settled for Rs. 18 Crores. A token amount of Rs. 50 Lakhs as bribe money was also taken by KP Gosavi and his aide Sanvile D'Souza but later a part of this amount of Rs. 50 Lakhs bribe money was returned back by them,” the FIR stated.
Aryan Khan, who was formally arrested by the NCB on October 3, 2021, after a raid on the Cordelia cruise ship a day before, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 28 after he had spent 25 days in jail. But his name was not included in the list of accused in the NCB charge sheet for lack of evidence.
The SET (special enquiry team) in its findings, now part of the FIR, said Aryan Khan and other suspects were brought to the NCB office in Gosavi's private vehicle on October 2, 2021. Wankhede, in the capacity of the immediate supervisory officer, had directed to take Gosavi and Sail as the independent witness in the proceedings against the accused in the drug bust case, the FIR states.
He had directed then NCB superintendent V V Singh to let Gosavi "handle the accused" while taking him to the NCB office, thereby "allowing a freehand" to him and others in order to create a visual impression that Gosavi had the custody of the accused, it said.
"It appeared that the presence of the independent witness Gosavi around accused persons was created intentionally in such a manner so as to give an impression that Gosavi was an NCB personnel even though there were NCB personnel to handle the custody of the accused persons," the FIR stated.
Gosavi was allowed to be present in the company of the accused persons and even allowed to come to the NCB office after the raid and took the freedom to click selfies and recorded the voice note of an accused.
In other serious allegations, the FIR stated how Sameer Wankhede “could not sufficiently justify” acquired assets as per declared income besides not being about to “properly explain” his foreign visits and “apparently mis-declared the expenditure.”
The details of FIR surface as the CBI conducted raids on the premises of Sameer Wankhede last week to probe the corruption case against him in connection with the drugs-on-cruise case.