Sameer Wankhede, accused in bribery case, claims he's getting death threats

Amid charges of bribery vis-a-vis the sensational Cordelia drugs-on-cruise case of October 2021, high-profile IRS officer Sameer Wankhede has claimed that he and his wife Kranti Redkar have been receiving death threats over the past few days and sought police protection.

Wankhede, an officer of the 2008-batch IRS, is under the scanner of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) vis-a-vis the Cordelia drugs-on-cruise case, when he was the Mumbai Zonal Director of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).

The CBI has booked Wankhede for allegedly seeking a bribe of Rs 25 crore in the drug bust case involving actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan.

On Friday, Wankhede submitted WhatsApp chats in the Bombay High Court, in which Khan seemingly suggested him to go easy on his son.

Read | WhatsApp chat of SRK and Sameer Wankhede surfaces

Over Saturday and Sunday, the CBI recorded Wankhede's statement at the agency’s Bandra Kurla Complex office.

On Monday, the Bombay High Court extended the interim protection to Wankhede till June 8.

During the court hearing before a vacation bench comprising Justice Abhay Ahuja and Justice M M Sathaye, CBI counsel Kuldeep Patil referred to private chats shared by the petitioner. However, counsel Aabad Ponda, who is representing Wankhede, submitted that his client only circulated the content in the petition and nothing beyond that.

While granting protection, the court directed Wankhede to not publish any material by way of WhatsApp or any other mode on the subject matter of petition or investigation or give press statements or tamper with evidence in any matter whatsoever.

“Me and my wife Kranti Redkar have been receiving threats for the last four days and there are obscene messages on social media platforms,” Wankhede has claimed.

“I will be sharing with CP sahab (Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar)…there are some serious threats,” he said.

A total of 20 persons were arrested during the October 2-3, 2021 midnight raid and subsequent investigations. The NCB had seized 13 grams of cocaine, 5 grams of mephedrone, 21 grams of charas and 22 MDMA/Ecstasy pills during the raid on the Cordelia cruise from Mumbai to Goa.

The Bombay High Court, on October 28, 2021, while giving bail to Aryan Khan, Arbaaz Merchant and Munmum Dhamecha, had observed: “There is hardly any positive evidence on record to convince this court that all the accused persons with common intention agreed to commit unlawful acts.”

In May 2022, Aryan Khan was given a clean chit by the NCB saying that the evidence was “insufficient”.

After this, the NCB also carried out an internal probe into the issue vis-a-vis the allegations against Wankhede.

Besides Wankhede, others booked were the then NCB-Mumbai's Superintendent, Ashish Ranjan, then NCB-Mumbai's Intelligence Officer, two private persons K P Gosavi and Sanvile D'Souza among others.

Wankhede had alleged that NCB’s Deputy Director Gyaneshwar Singh was humiliating and harassing during the internal investigation as he belongs to a backward community.