NCB used same witness in five separate drug-related cases: Report

Controversy is brewing around the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) again after a recent media report alleged that it had been using the same witness in at least five separate drugs cases. The witness, identified by the Indian Express as Adil Fazil Usmani, was produced in the five drug peddling cases initiated by the NCB as a "panch witness" and is also a listed witness in the Aryan Khan drugs case. Two others, Kiran Gosavi and Manish Bahubali, appear in the NCB witness list the report alleges.

The newspaper reported, citing records seen by it, that Usmani, a resident of the Jogeshwari area in Mumbai, was cited by the NCB as a panch witness in these five cases – two of them in 2020 and three in 2021. The NCB has already come under fire after Prabhakar Sail, a bodyguard of NCB witness Kiran Gosavi, alleged that he had overheard Gosavi being paid 50 lakh rupees after the raid on the Cordelia cruise ship which netted Aryan Khan and several others on drugs charges. Sail also claimed that Gosavi had been negotiating with unknown persons to 'settle the matter' for 18 crore rupees, 8 crores of which had to be delivered to chief investigating officer Sameer Wankhede.

Gosavi himself was arrested connection with a cheating case in Pune which occured in 2018 after which the police claimed he had gone missing and only surfaced after the Cordelia raid. He has denied any and all allegations made by Gosavi.

Aryan Khan was released today after his third attempt at bail. He has been in custody four weeks since the arrest on October 2.