New Delhi: The vigilance inquiry by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) into former official Sameer Wankhede and his team has reportedly found “departmental and vigilance issues” with seven or eight agency officials, a report in the Indian Express has said.
The inquiry against Wankhede and his team was ordered in October last year following the NCB raid on the Cordelia cruise ship in Mumbai in which Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, was arrested. Charges against Khan were, however, dropped in May this year, with the NCB citing a lack of evidence.
At the time, Wankhede was the Mumbai zonal director of the narcotics agency. He has since been posted to the Taxpayer Service Directorate in Chennai.
While the NCB sources cited in the Express report have not named the officials against whom the lapses were discovered, they said that “selective treatment” was involved in naming people as accused in the case.
Further, the newspaper noted that two other NCB investigations have come under the scanner due to the vigilance inquiry and that investigation in those cases is ongoing.
Cordelia drug bust
On October 2, the NCB conducted a raid on a party taking place on the Cordelia cruise ship in Mumbai after reportedly receiving a tipoff that drugs were being consumed at the party. Several people were arrested in the case in the days that followed, including Aryan Khan.
Thereafter, several controversies emerged in the case, such as the presence of a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a ‘private detective’ during the raid; a war of words between the BJP and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP); and widespread allegations of impropriety on the part of the investigating officials.
On October 24, allegations of impropriety and extortion surfaced against Wankhede.
Also read: In NCB’s Handling of Aryan Khan Drug Case, a Familiar Pattern Emerges
Prabhakar Sail, who claimed to be the bodyguard of ‘private detective’ K.P. Gosavi, filed an affidavit in which he claimed that Wankhede made him sign 10 blank sheets of paper as a ‘panch’ witness in the case.
Sail also claimed that he heard Gosavi talk to one Sam D’Souza about a Rs 18 crore deal, of which Rs 8 crore “was meant to be paid to Wankhede”. Moreover, he claimed to have been given the cash by Gosavi, which he allegedly handed over to D’Souza.
In April this year, Sail died of a heart attack.
Wankhede denied the allegations. However, the next day, the NCB ordered the vigilance inquiry into the allegations of extortion. The inquiry was to be conducted by Gyaneshwar Singh, the NCB’s deputy director general (DDG) of northern region and its chief vigilance officer (CVO).
Today, nearly a year after the events of the case, the findings from the inquiry have surfaced.
Inquiry report
CVO Singh reportedly told the Express that the inquiry was completed three months ago and a 3,000 page report was submitted to the director general of the anti-narcotics agency.
Without naming any of the agency’s officers, the report recommended “stringent” punishment for those found guilty of the aforementioned departmental and vigilance infractions.
An NCB official quoted in the Express report said that selective treatment was meted out when naming some individuals as accused in the case. According to the source, the probe also found procedural lapses on the part of the investigating officers.
The report, however, did not find any evidence that Wankhede had been involved in extortion, as had been alleged.
Further, the inquiry report noted how information regarding the case was being provided by NCB officials to the media in a selective manner and as such, recommended that the agency formulate an official media policy.