Maharashtra minister alleges witness 'tampering' by NCB in Aryan Khan drugs case
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Mumbai: Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik has raised serious allegations against the senior investigator in the cruise ship drugs case which saw Aryan Khan, son of Shah Rukh Khan, arrested and detained earlier this month. Minister Malik has alleged that investigator Sameer Wankhede is recruiting acquaintances as witnesses in the case.
In a press conference in the national capital, Malik displayed photos of Fletcher Patel, one of the witnesses recruited to testify on behalf of the NCB, with Jasmin Wankhede, sister of the NCB investigator, and alleged that there was proof that he was a close acquaintance of Sameer Wankhede.
The man seen with Aryan Khan after his arrest in a viral selfie is a private investigator by the name of K.P Gosavi, the minister had said in earlier statements, questioning how outsiders could have been let in such close proximity of a high profile case. Last Saturday the minister had made further allegations that Wankhede had colluded with the BJP to release three people from the cruise ship that Aryan Khan was arrested from, for allegedly possessing and consuming drugs. These three people he named as Rishabh Sachdeva, Prateek Gaba and Amir Furniturewala and Rishabh Sachdeva is BJP leader's Mohit Kamboj's brother-in-law, he had said.
On Thursday Nawab Malik alleged that his son-in-law Sameer Khan and two others had been 'framed' by the NCB in connection with a narcotics case in January this year. A detailed bail order passed by the special NDPS court has observed that no case for illicit drug trafficking and conspiracy was made out.
Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had also criticised the undue attention given by the NCB to the Cordelia cruise ship case when bigger drug hauls had been seized from Mumbai around the same time, alleging that it was more interested in chasing celebrities than crime. He also reminded the BJP during his Dussehra rally speech about the case of 3000 kg heroin haul in Mundra port in Gujarat, worth thousands of crores of rupees.