Sameer Wankhede goes to court as Nawab Malik raises another charge

Hours after Prabhakar Sail, a witness in the drugs-on-cruise case involving Aryan Khan, came out with several serious allegations against the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), the agency’s zonal director of Mumbai Sameer Wankhede, who is investigating this case, has sought legal protection, saying he would be ‘falsely framed’.

Wankhede in a statement to the Mumbai Police Commissioner and later an application in a special court, said that threats of jail and dismissal have been issued against him by ‘highly respectable public functionaries’.

“It has come to my notice that some precipitate legal action for framing me falsely is being planned by unknown persons in relation to the alleged vigilance issue,” Wankhede said in his statement.

The matter has been referred to the Director General of NCB for necessary action. The NCB and Wankhede have filed a petition in an NDPS court, denying the allegations.

An NCB officer has said that a central agency should probe the allegations.

Also read: Aryan Khan case gets murkier, witness claims ‘payoffs’ to NCB

Sail, who claims to be the personal bodyguard to KP Gosavi, the private detective whose selfie with Aryan Khan went viral, alleged that he overheard a conversation between Gosavi and one Sam D’Souza about an ₹18-crore deal. Sail also claimed that he overheard Gosavi, who is on the run now, saying that they had to give eight crore rupees to Wankhede.

He said that following Gosavi’s instructions, he received two bags of cash, which contained ₹38 lakh, and handed them to Sam D’Souza. He also said that he had been asked to sign on 10 blank sheets on the day of the raid on the cruise ship.

Besides these claims, Sail has said that he feared that the NCB officials “may kill me or abduct me like Gosavi”, who has not been traceable since NCP leader Nawab Malik pointed to his controversial involvement in the case.

Malik, who has been raising allegations against the NCB probe into the drugs conspiracy, saying that it was to defame Maharashtra, had said that Wankhede “would lose his job within a year”.

“They (BJP) have a puppet – Wankhede. He raises bogus cases against people. I challenge that Wankhede that he’ll lose his job within a year… We have evidence of bogus cases,” Malik was quoted as saying.

On Monday, he raised another controversy with a tweet, that said “Sameer Dawood Wankhede’s foregery started here”, along with a birth certificate.

Sameer Dawood Wankhede का यहां से शुरू हुआ फर्जीवाड़ा pic.twitter.com/rjdOkPs4T6

— Nawab Malik نواب ملک नवाब मलिक (@nawabmalikncp) October 25, 2021

Wankhede responded to the tweet saying it was defamatory and “unnecessary invasion of my family privacy”. “It is intended to malign me, my family, my father and my later mother”.

“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. I belong to a composite, multi religious and secular family in true Indian tradition and I am proud of my heritage,” Wankhede said in a press release.