Aryan Khan case gets murkier, witness claims 'payoffs' to NCB

The Mumbai cruise drugs bust case, which led to the high-profile arrest of Aryan Khan, just got murkier, as an aide of absconding KP Gosavi, Prabhakar Sail, has made some shocking claims alleging ‘pay-offs’ made by Gosavi to Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) chief Sameer Wankhede.

Gosavi is one of the nine independent witnesses in the cruise ship raid and alleged recovery of drugs, in which Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was arrested earlier this month. He had shot into the public eye, after his selfie with a just arrested Aryan Khan had gone viral.

In an exclusive interview to India Today TV, Sail also alleged that he felt a threat to his life from NCB Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede after Gosavi went ‘suspiciously missing’. The Pune police had recently issued a look-out notice for Gosavi in a cheating case.

However, an NDTV report quoting Wankhede said that he has denied any wrongdoing and added that he would be giving a “a fitting reply”.

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The India Today report went on to quote from a notarised affidavit, in which, Sail had admitted that he was a witness to the dramatic events that had unfolded after the cruise raid. Working as Gosavi’s bodyguard, he alleged that he had accompanied Gosavi on the night of the raid and was even made to “sign blank papers as panchnama”.

Sail reportedly also discreetly shot some videos and pictures during the raid. In one of the videos, Gosavi could be seen making Aryan Khan speak to someone on his phone. It is not clear who Khan was made to speak to on the phone. Sail alleged that he had overhead a talk of a ₹ 18 crore deal between KP Gosavi and one Sam D’Souza, of which ₹8 crore was to be paid to Sameer Wankhede, said the NDTV report.

He also said he had received the cash from KP Gosavi and handed it over to Sam D’Souza.Sail who is named as a witness in a press release by the agency issued on October 6 has further alleged that Gosavi has gone missing.

Sources in the agency have however refuted these claims as “baseless”. They asked that if money had exchanged hands, “why would someone be in jail?”. The claims have been ostensibly made to “malign the (agency’s) image, added the sources. This affidavit can be presented in the NDPS court and a reply would be given.