The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has removed Sameer Wankhede as lead investigator from six cases including Mumbai cruise drugs bust case, in which Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan is also one of the accused. Notably, one of the cases also include the probe into allegations against Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik’s son-in-law Sameer Khan. All the six cases have been transferred from the NCB’s Mumbai zone to the central zone. Sanjay Singh, the deputy director general of the central unit of the NCB, will now be the supervising officer for all six cases.
Wankhede has been in the eye of storm following accusations from Maharshtra Minister Nawab Malik and, more importantly, from Prabhakar Sail, a NCB witness in the Aryan Khan case. The NCP leader brought several charges against him, including extortion and fraudulent use of caste card to secure his job.
“Total six cases of our zone will now be investigated by Delhi teams (of NCB), including Aryan Khan’s case and five other cases. It was an administrative decision,” Mutha Ashok Jain, Deputy DG, South-Western Region, NCB was quoted by ANI as saying. He further said that while Wankhede would no more supervise the Aryan Khan case, he would continue in his role as the Mumbai zone director. A team from Delhi will reach Mumbai on Sunday.
Following his removal from the high profile cases, the NCP leader took to Twitter and said, “Sameer Wankhede removed from 5 cases including the Aryan Khan case. There are 26 cases in all that need to be probed. This is just the beginning… a lot more has to be done to clean this system and we will do it.”
Reacting to the reports, Wankhede said, “I’ve not been removed from the investigation. It was my writ petition in court that the matter be probed by a central agency. So Aryan case & Sameer Khan case are being probed by Delhi NCB’s SIT. It’s a coordination between NCB teams of Delhi and Mumbai.”
