NCB officer Wankhede tried to extort Rs 25 crore from SRK in Aryan case, says CBI

Actor Shah Rukh Khan’s family was asked to cough up Rs 25 crore or else  his son Aryan would be framed in a drugs case, the CBI has alleged  in its FIR against Sameer Wankhede, former Mumbai zone director of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).

Wankhede who as NCB chief headed the team that carried out the arrest of Aryan Khan and others in an alleged drug bust on a cruise ship off Mumbai in October 2021, has been booked for corruption and criminal misconduct.

The CBI’s FIR also states that Wankhede could  “not properly explain his foreign visits and had mis-declared the expenditure on his foreign travels”.

He also did not declare his purchase of expensive wrist watches.

According to the FIR Wankhede and Ashish Ranjan, then an intelligence officer with NCB, “could not sufficiently justify their acquired assets as per their declared income.”

The FIR names four others as accused in the corruption case including Vishwa Vijay Singh and Ashish Ranjan, then senior officers with the NCB, and KP Gosavi and his aide Sanvile D’Souza both private individuals.

KP Gosavi is the witness in the drugs-on-cruise case whose selfie with Aryan Khan following his arrest, sparking questions on how an individual not employed with NCB was allowed access to the accused.

The CBI’s FIR notes that Gosavi “was allowed to be present in the company of accused persons and even allowed to come to the NCB office after the raid which is against the norms for an independent witness”. “In this manner, KP Gosavi took the freedom and clicked selfies and recorded the voice note of an accused,” it adds.

The FIR states that there was a conspiracy “to extort a sum of Rs 25 crore 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 crore. A token amount of Rs 50 lakhs as bribe money was also taken by KP Gosavi and his aide Sanville D’Souza.

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

Many of these allegations were earlier made by former Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik and Prabhakar Sail, a witness in the drugs case who died of a heart attack last year.

Following his arrest, Aryan Khan spent 22 days in jail before the NCB cleared him of charges, citing a “lack of sufficient evidence”.

Wankhede, an IRS officer, was shunted out of the NCB and transferred to the Directorate General of Taxpayer Services in Chennai last year after the controversy.