Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant, and Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik’s son-in-law, Sameer Khan, are likely to be summoned by the new Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the NCB that recently took over six cases that were being led by the agency’s zonal director, Sameer Wankhede.
Aryan, son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, is an accused in the Mumbai drugs-on-cruise case along with Merchant, wherein a raid was conducted on a cruise off the Mumbai coast on October 3, leading to a number of arrests. Wankhede was also leading the investigation in a case against Sameer Khan. However, the officer is now facing a departmental vigilance probe after an independent witness in the cruise case alleged an extortion bid by those involved in the probe. On Friday, six cases were transferred from him to the agency’s central team.
Sources told CNN-News18 that other alleged accused in these six cases will also be summoned by the NCB SIT, adding that it is ‘routine procedure’ after a new team comes in. Details in the Mumbai cruise drugs case will be verified, the sources said.
The SIT had reached Mumbai on Saturday, a day after the cases were transferred. The team which flew in from Delhi, visited the NCB’s zonal office in south Mumbai in the afternoon, an official had informed. Senior IPS officer Sanjay Kumar Singh, DDG Operations at NCB headquarters, who is heading the SIT, had said, “We have taken over some cases and will start our investigation into it.”
When asked whether the cases would be re-investigated, he had said, “Let me first see the case by case records and the progress in the investigation so far, then we will decide.”
“Right now, only further investigation will be conducted in those cases,” he had added.
The team will probe the six cases, which have national and international ramifications, in order to conduct deeper investigation to find out forward and backward linkages, the NCB had said on Friday. NCB’s zonal director Sameer Wankhede said he was not an investigating officer of these cases, adding that he was a supervisory officer as a zonal director and his role will continue to be the same. Meanwhile, NCP leader Nawab Malik said skeletons will tumble out in the probe.
“I had demanded an S.I.T probe to investigate Sameer Dawood Wankhede for kidnapping of & 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, the senior Maharashtra minister had tweeted.
With inputs from Manoj Gupta and Herman Agnelo Gomes.
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