Cruise drugs case: NCB arrests Nigerian national; 20 people held so far

The Narcotics Control Bureau arrested a Nigerian national on Sunday in connection with the cruise drugs party raid case, an NCB official said.

With this, 20 people have so far been arrested by the NCB in connection with the case, including Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan, he said.

Giving details of the latest arrest, the official said a team of the NCB laid a trap in suburban Goregaon and apprehended the accused, identified as Okaro Ouzama, “along with an intermediate quantity of cocaine” on Saturday. This is the second arrest of a foreign national in the case, the official said. Earlier also, the NCB had arrested a Nigerian in the case.

The NCB is making efforts to explore the foreign linkages in the case on the basis of interrogation of the accused, the official said.

He also said that two men, whom NCP leader and Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik had claimed as “outsiders” involved in the raid, were actually among the nine independent witnesses involved in the whole operation. He said the duo was not known to the NCB before October 2, when the raid was conducted on the Goa-bound ship.

A total of nine independent witnesses were involved in the whole operation (cruise ship raid) and Manish Bhanushali and KP Gosavi were among them. “None of the independent witnesses, including the two (Bhanushali and Gosavi) were known to the NCB before October 2,” the official said.

The NCB had earlier said all the allegations levelled against it in connection with the cruise ship raid were “baseless, motivated afterthoughts and prejudicial”.

NCB’s Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede had said the anti-drugs agency works professionally. “We do not see any political party and religion. We do our job professionally,” he added.

Based on a tip-off, an NCB team raided the Goa-bound cruise ship on October 2 and claimed to have recovered banned drugs.

The case took a political turn when NCP leader Nawab Malik on Wednesday claimed that the raid was “fake” and that “outsiders” were involved in it.

On Saturday, Malik alleged that the NCB had initially detained 11 people from the Goa-bound cruise ship, but let off three, including the brother-in-law of a BJP leader, a couple of hours later.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)