The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has ordered a vigilance probe after allegations of a demand for bribe were made against its zonal director Sameer Wankhede by an independent witness in the cruise ship case in which Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan has been arrested.
Sources said NCB’s deputy director-general Gyanneshwar Singh, who is also the agency’s chief vigilance officer, has been asked to probe the allegation.
In a notarised affidavit, witness Prabhakar Raghoji Sail on Sunday said that shortly after the NCB raid on October 2, he had overheard a conversation about paying Rs 8 crore to Wankhede.
Sail said he was the personal bodyguard of another independent witness K.P. Gosavi, whose selfie with Aryan inside the NCB office on the night of the raid had caught attention.
In the affidavit, Sail said that after Aryan’s detention, “Gosavi was talking to Sam on the phone and stated that you put a bomb of 25 crores and let’s settle at 18 final because we have to give 8 crores to Sameer Wankhede”.
On Monday, Sail met senior Mumbai police officials and sought protection saying he feared for his life.
Wankhede, who has been leading the probe in the Aryan case, invoked his secular credentials and protested the “invasion of his family privacy” after his personal documents were published on social media.
“I would like to express that my father Sh. Dnyandev Kachruji Wankhede retired as senior police inspector of state excise department, Pune on 30.06.2007. My father is a Hindu and my mother late Mrs. Zaheeda was a Muslim,” Wankhede said.
“I belong to a composite, multi religious and secular family in true Indian tradition and I am proud of my heritage. Further, I married Dr. Shabana Qureshi in 2006 in a civil marriage ceremony under the Special Marriage Act, 1954. Both of us divorced mutually through civil court under the Special Marriage Act in the year 2016. Later in the year 2017, I married Shrimati Kranti Dinanath Redkar,” he said.
Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik had tweeted a birth certificate that purportedly shows Sameer Wankhede was born as Sameer Dawood Wankhede. The minister also shared a photograph of his nikaah with Shabana Qureshi.
Malik implied Wankhede had forged his caste certificate to bag the NCB job under the Scheduled Caste quota.
