Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) zonal director Sameer Wankhede, heading the probe into the Mumbai drug bust case, alleged on Monday that his movement is being tracked. Wankhede has made an oral complaint before Maharashtra Police in this regard. He had spearheaded a raid on a cruise off the Mumbai coast earlier this month, leading to the arrest of several people, including Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.
The officer in his complaint alleged that he has come across several people, dressed in civil clothes, who were “following his movement”. Wankhede has also submitted proof of CCTV footage to the police. He further alleged that other officials of the Mumbai NCB team are also being “tracked”.
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Wankhede is a 2008 Batch IRS officer. His first posting was at the Mumbai airport as the Customs Officer. In the last two years, a probe led by him and his team managed to seize drugs worth Rs 17,000 crore. His posting and designations from 2008 to 2020 include Deputy Commissioner of Air Intelligence Unit (AIU), Additional SP of National Investigation Agency (NIA), Joint Commissioner of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and Zonal Director of NCB.
Meanwhile, a special court here on Monday said it would hear the bail application of Aryan Khan, arrested in connection with the seizure of banned drugs onboard a cruise ship, on October 13, and directed the NCB to file its reply on that date.
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Special Judge V V Patil, hearing matters related to the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, said the court would hear the bail plea on Wednesday after the NCB said there was “no extreme urgency” to hear the application and sought a week to file an affidavit. The defence said Aryan Khan was “falsely implicated” and releasing him on bail would not stop the probe.
Aryan Khan was arrested on October 3 after the NCB raided a Goa-bound cruise ship off the Mumbai coast and claimed to have recovered drugs from some persons. He is currently in judicial custody and lodged at the Arthur Road prison in Mumbai. He approached the special court for bail on October 8 after his plea for the same was rejected by a magistrate’s court last week on the ground that it did not have the jurisdiction to decide the matter.
In his plea, Aryan Khan said he was innocent and has not committed any crime and that he has been falsely implicated in the case. There is nothing on record to suggest that the present applicant (Aryan Khan) is in any way connected with the production, manufacture, possession, sale, purchase, transport, import, export or use of any psychotropic substance or the financing, illicit trafficking and/or harbouring of offenders in relation to any narcotic drugs, the bail application said.
It added that no incriminating contraband drugs or any other material were recovered from Aryan Khan and that he had strong roots in the society and hence there was no likelihood of him absconding or fleeing from justice.
On Monday, when Aryan Khan’s counsel Amit Desai mentioned the bail plea, NCB’s advocates A M Chimalkar and Advait Sethna sought a week to respond and file their affidavit.
They said the investigation in the case was still on and there was quite a lot of material collected by the agency and at this stage, it needs to be seen if releasing Aryan Khan on bail would hamper the probe into the case.
With inputs from PTI.
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