Sameer Wankhede transferred to Chennai for alleged shoddy probe against Aryan Khan

Sameer Wankhede, former NCB officer whose handling of the Mumbai drugs-on-cruise case was dogged by controversy, was moved to Chennai on Monday. The news comes only days after the Narcotics Control Bureau cleared Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who was detained by Wankhede and his colleagues last year on suspicion of drug possession.

Wankhede, an Indian Revenue Service officer, has been posted to Director-General of Taxpayer Services in the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. He was most recently assigned to the office of the director-general of analytics and risk management in Mumbai as an assistant commissioner.

After Aryan Khan was given a clean chit, the national government took action against the former Zonal Director of the NCB’s Mumbai office last week. The government had sought a competent body to take action against Wankhede for his alleged ‘shoddy’ investigation into the drugs-on-cruise case.

The names of Aryan and five others were not included in the NCB’s charge sheet, which was submitted in a Mumbai court, owing to a ‘lack of solid proof’.

On October 3, last year, Wankhede and his squad took over the investigation into the narcotics case after raiding a Cordelia cruise ship off the coast of Mumbai and arresting Aryan Khan and 22 others. The Bombay High Court granted Aryan bail on October 28, dismissing NCB’s claims and stating that such serious charges cannot be made only based on WhatsApp communications.

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Wankhede was then charged with corruption, and the matter was moved to a Delhi-based SIT led by Sanjay Kumar Singh, the deputy director-general (operations). Wankhede was withdrawn from the investigation by the NCB headquarters on November 6 last year.

According to NCB sources, the SIT constituted in the case may file a report with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to assign blame for the sloppy investigation. The study will determine who was responsible for the inquiry and why Aryan Khan and others were granted a clean bill of health. The MHA is monitoring the situation.