‘Rs 25 Crore Demanded From SRK’s Family’: CBI’s Case Against Sameer Wankhede

According to the FIR that was filed by the CBI against Sameer Wankhede, a former zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Shah Rukh Khan’s family was threatened that their son Aryan would be framed in a narcotics case unless he paid Rs 25 crore.

The arrest of Aryan Khan and others in an alleged drug bust on a cruise ship off the coast of Mumbai in October 2021 made Mr. Wankhede the subject of allegations of criminal misconduct and corruption.

Sameer Wankhede Case

The officer’s trips to other countries and the sale and purchase of high-end wristwatches were mentioned in the CBI’s FIR.
According to the FIR, investigations into the allegations against Mr. Wankhede and then-NCB intelligence officer Ashish Ranjan “could not sufficiently justify their acquired assets as per their declared income. ” It adds that Mr. Wankhede “had apparently mis-declared the expenditure on his foreign travels and had not properly explained his foreign visits.”

Other than Mr. Wankhede, four others are named in the FIR. These include KP Gosavi and his assistant Sanvile D’Souza, senior NCB officers at the time, Vishwa Vijay Singh, and Ashish Ranjan.

KP Gosavi is the observer in the medication on-journey case whose selfie with Aryan Khan following his capture started inquiries on how an individual not utilized with NCB was permitted admission to the blamed.

The CBI’s FIR noticed that Gosavi “was permitted to be available in the organization of charged people and, surprisingly, permitted to come to the NCB office after the strike, which is against the standards for a free observer”. “KP Gosavi took the freedom, took selfies, and recorded an accused person’s voice note in this manner,” it adds.

The FIR hails connivance “to blackmail an amount of  25 crores from the relatives of the claimed ‘blamed’ Aryan Khan by compromising them for the allegation of offenses of ownership of opiate substances”. “This sum was at last agreed to be 18 crores.” The FIR states that KP Gosavi and his aide Sanville D’Souza also took a token amount of 50 lakhs as bribe money, but they later returned a portion of this amount of 50 lakhs as bribe money.”

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“To let KP Gosavi handle the accused while taking him to the NCB office, thereby allowing a free hand to KP Gosavi and others in order to create a visual impression of KP Gosavi having custody of the accused and escorting or dragging him towards the NCB Mumbai office,” the CBI alleged, Wankhede had asked Vishwa Vijay Singh, the superintendent of NCB.

Nawab Malik, a former Maharashtra minister and leader of the NCP who is currently in jail on corruption charges, and Prabhakar Sail, a witness in the drugs-on-cruise case who passed away from a heart attack last year, previously made many of these allegations.

Last year, Wankhede was transferred to Chennai’s Directorate General of Taxpayer Services. He claimed that he “was being punished for being a patriot” following the most recent CBI home raids. I am being rewarded for being a patriot: yesterday, 18 CBI agents raided and searched my home for more than 12 hours with my family inside. They found 23,000 and four property papers. These resources were gained before I joined the assistance programme,” he said.