Nationalist Congress Party leader Nawab Malik has levelled new allegations against Narcotics Control Bureau’s zonal director Sameer Wankhede. He alleged that Wankhede tried to kidnap Aryan Khan in an attempt to extort money from the star kid’s family failing which he framed him in a drugs case.
Aryan along with two others, was arrested by the NCB on October 2 for his alleged involvement in a Mumbai cruise drugs party.
Malik also said that “skeletons from Wankhede’s closet” will be exposed and his “private army” will be unveiled by the state government’s special investigation team (SIT), probing his allegations.
“I had demanded an S.I.T probe to investigate Sameer Dawood Wankhede for kidnapping & ransom demand from Aryan Khan. Now 2 SITs are constituted (state & centre), let us see who brings out the skeletons from the closet of Wankhede and exposes him and his nefarious private army,” Malik tweeted on Saturday morning.
He was referring to the four-member team formed by the Mumbai police on October 27 to probe the allegations made by Prabhakar Sail, a key witness in the Aryan Khan case, and three others.
Sail had alleged that Wankhede was a part of a 25 crore extortion racket targetting Aryan and that the officer had forced Sail to sign blank papers on the night of the raid.
Malik has been levelling allegations against Wankhede and the NCB for the past three weeks and has claimed to have proof of his the same. He has criticised the NCB for its poor vigilance, discrepancies in investigation and has raised questions on Wankhede’s religion. On November 2, he alleged Wankhede of forming a private army to extort crores from people to drop charges to fulfill his expensive needs.
“Wankhede made a private army. Kiran Gosavi, Manish Bhanushali, Fletcher Patel, Adil Usmani, Sam D Souza, Illu Pathan among others were its players. It was involved in the drug business. Those in major business were allowed to run while actions were shown on small quantity cases and implicating people and extorted crores,” Malik alleged.
Following the allegations, the NCB decide to transfer 6 cases under Wankhede and the NCB to an SIT from Mumbai zonal unit for an internal vigilance probe against Wankhede.
“A Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising officers from Operations Branch of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Headquarters has been constituted by the Director-General, NCB to take over a total of 06 cases from NCB Mumbai Zonal Unit which have national and international ramifications, in order to conduct a deeper investigation to find out forward and backward linkages,” a statement from Singh’s office said issued on Friday.