Cruise Case: Kiran Gosavi & Prabhakar Sail Unavailable, NCB Team Probing Extortion Claim Leaves Mumbai

Sameer Wankhede had dismissed all allegations against him as “baseless" and maintained that he conducted a fair probe in the cruise drugs case.

New Delhi: A special team of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), investigating the allegations of extortion in the drugs-on-cruise case, left for Delhi on Saturday without recording the statement of witness Prabhakar Sail who had raised serious charges against Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede and others, an official said, as reported by news agency PTI.

The five-member team, headed by NCB Deputy Director General (northern region) Gyaneshwar Singh, had reached Mumbai on Wednesday to record statements after a departmental vigilance probe was ordered against Sameer Wankhede and others following Prabhakar Sail’s claims that pay off of Rs 25 crore was discussed in connection with the case of which Rs 8 crore was meant for the Mumbai Zonal Director.

In the last three days, the NCB special team recorded statements of eight persons, including Wankhede, and collected some important documents and recordings related to the cruise drugs case in which superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan is one of the accused, the official said, as reported by PTI.

However, the team could not record the statements of Prabhakar Sail and Kiran Gosavi, another NCB witness in the cruise drugs case who was on Thursday arrested by Pune City police in connection with a cheating case lodged in 2018.

DDG Gyaneshwar Singh had appealed to Prabhakar through media to come forward to record his statement and submit related evidence if any.

Gyaneshwar Singh had also written to Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale to convey to Prabhakar to present himself before the NCB team on Saturday, but the witness did not turn up, PTI reported.

As both the witnesses - Kiran Gosavi and Prabhakar Sail - were not available, the NCB team left for Delhi, the official said.

Prabhakar Sail’s Allegations

Notably, Kiran Gosavi’s selfie with Aryan Khan had gone viral on social media, and another video of him making the accused talk to someone on phone led to allegations being raised on NCB’s probe in the drugs case.

As for the allegations, Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness in the drugs-on-cruise case, had claimed that  Rs 25 crore was demanded by an official of the NCB and other persons, including Kiran Gosavi, to let off Aryan Khan in the case.

Prabhakar used to work as a bodyguard for Kiran, who claims to be a private detective.

After Aryan Khan was brought to the NCB office following the October 2 raid on the cruise ship, Prabhakar claimed that he had overheard Kiran Gosavi telling one Sam D’souza over the phone, about a demand of Rs 25 crore and “to settle at Rs 18 crore as they have to give Rs Eight crore to Sameer Wankhede”.

Sameer Wankhede had dismissed all allegations against him as “baseless" and maintained that he conducted a fair probe in the cruise drugs case.

Officials of the NCB team had said that Prabhakar was a “critical witness” in the inquiry and without his statement, the team will not be able to reach any conclusion.

Meanwhile, it is not immediately clear whether the NCB team will return to Mumbai again for investigation of the extortion allegations.

(With Agency Inputs)