ED action against former NCB officer Sameer Wankhede, money laundering case registered
After CBI, now ED has registered a case of money laundering against former Mumbai NCB zonal director Sameer Wankhede. ED has also called three NCB officers for questioning. The vigilance investigation conducted by the NCB against Wankhede and two other officers revealed that they had allegedly demanded extortion from actor Shah Rukh Khan for the release of his son Aryan Khan in the Cordelia Cruise case. Sources say that soon two other officers of Sameer Wankhede, the then superintendent VV Singh and intelligence officer Ashish Ranjan Prasad will be summoned by the ED.
Sameer Wankhede is accused of demanding a bribe of ₹25 crore from actor Shahrukh Khan to save his son Aryan Khan from getting trapped in the October 2021 cruise drugs case. Apart from this, a case is also pending against him for acquiring wealth beyond his known sources of income. Wankhede had filed an application in the Bombay High Court earlier this week after ED summoned some NCB officials in the money laundering case. He has appealed to the court to cancel the ED ECIR and not take any punitive action. Earlier, he had filed similar applications in the CBI case also. In that case, Sameer Wankhede has been granted protection by the High Court.
The ED had registered a case against Wankhede, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, a few days ago on the basis of the CBI FIR filed in May last year. CBI has already interrogated Sameer Wankhede and other accused persons in the case. The former NCB officer has rejected the allegations against him and said that the CBI action was the result of vendetta against him by some NCB officers. Aryan Khan was arrested on October 3, 2021, a day after the raid on Cordelia Cruises in Mumbai.
