Sameer Wankhede made undeclared foreign trips, bought expensive watches: CBI

New Delhi, May 15

The CBI, which has booked former Zonal Director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Sameer Wankhede for allegedly demanding Rs 25 crore from Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s family to spare his son in a drugs case, is looking into the accused officer’s foreign visits and his alleged involvement in the sale and purchase of expensive watches, officials said today.

The NCB’s special enquiry team (SET) had red-flagged alleged improper explanations and apparent misdeclaration of “the expenditure” given by Wankhede on his foreign visits. The officials said, “He has not declared the source of his foreign visits properly. It has also been found that Wankhede indulged in the sale and purchase of expensive wrist watches with a private entity, Viral Rajan, without intimating the department,” the SET said in its findings.

The CBI today made public the details of the FIR, which showed that independent witnesses KP Gosavi and Prabhakar Sail, now deceased, were included in NCB’s Cordelia cruise ship drug raid on October 2, 2021, on Wankhede’s directions.

Gosavi, in conspiracy with his aide Sanvile D’Souza and others, had entered into a conspiracy to extort Rs 25 crore from family members of Aryan, son of Shah Rukh Khan, by threatening to implicate Aryan is a drugs case.

After negotiations, Gosavi and D’Souza sealed the deal for Rs 18 crore, with Rs 50 lakh taken as the token amount, the CBI has alleged in its FIR.

Aryan, who was arrested by the NCB on October 3, 2021, after a raid on the Cordelia cruise ship, 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 chargesheet for lack of evidence. The SET, in its findings that are now part of the FIR, said Aryan and other suspects in the Cordelia ship drugs case 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 independent witnesses in the proceedings against Aryan, the CBI said. — TNS

FIR states…

• The FIR states that independent witnesses KP Gosavi and Prabhakar Sail, now deceased, were included in NCB’s Cordelia cruise ship drug raid on October 2, 2021, on Wankhede’s directions
• Aryan and other suspects were brought to the NCB office in Gosavi’s private vehicle on October 2, 2021