Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Minister Nawab Malik has levelled fresh accusations at Sameer Wankhede, taking to Twitter Malik alleged that Wankhede, an IRS officer who serves as Zonal Director of the NCB in Mumbai, used forged documents to get his job. To back his allegation, he posted a copy of Wankhede’s birth certificate, which shows his father’s name as different from the one mentioned in his service records.
This is from where Sameer Dawood Wankhede’s forgery started; Malik wrote in Hindi. The Civil Services Examination candidate information list is maintained by the Department of Personnel and Training. It mentions that Wankhede applied for the job under the Scheduled Caste quota and was allotted the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) cadre. With the birth certificate, Malik was implying that Wankhede is originally a Muslim. Dalit Muslims are not eligible for benefits under the Scheduled Caste quota.
Wankhede subsequently issued a statement denying the allegations, adding that the publication of his personal documents on Twitter is “defamatory in nature and unnecessary invasion of family privacy”. The birth certificate tweeted mentioned Wankhede’s father’s name as Dawood Wankhede. In the officer’s service records, his father’s name is mentioned as ‘Dnyandev Wankhede’.
In his statement responding to Malik’s claims, Wankhede said his father “Dnyandev Kachruji Wankhede” retired as senior police inspector in the Maharashtra state excise department, Pune, on 30 June 2007. His father is a Hindu, and his mother Late Zaheeda was a Muslim. On Monday, photographs from Wankhede’s first marriage also went viral.
To this, Wankhede wrote he married Dr Shabana Qureshi in 2006 in a civil marriage ceremony under the Special Marriage Act, 1954. Both of them divorced mutually through the civil court under the Special Marriage Act in the year 2016. In 2017, Wankhede married Marathi actor Kranti Redkar, and the couple has twin daughters.
Wankhede led the team that carried out the 2 October raid on a cruise ship off the coast of Mumbai where Aryan Khan and friends were allegedly detained for drug-related offences. Malik has since sought to allege a conspiracy, making public statements to poke holes in the NCB’s investigation.
Among other things, the minister has questioned the presence of a man identified as K.P. Gosavi at the NCB headquarters during Aryan’s arrest, despite the fact that he is not associated with the agency. Gosavi is believed to have absconded since. Malik has claimed that the entire Aryan Khan drug bust is a fake case and that Wankhede was in the Maldives amid Covid restrictions — at a time when a number of Bollywood personalities were at the archipelago — as he was running an extortion racket.
Wankhede later clarified that he visited the Maldives with proper permission from his department for a family vacation after the lockdown was lifted.
Wankhede approached Mumbai Commissioner of Police Hemant Nagrale, asking him to ensure there is no precipitate or hasty legal action carried out against him to frame him with ulterior motives.
Earlier on the same day, a witness in the case, Prabhakar Sail, claimed he was made to sign on a blank paper and alleged there was talk of a payoff worth crore, pointing to the NCB zonal director as one of the beneficiaries. The NCB released a statement in response to Sail’s claims, saying Wankhede has categorically denied the allegations.
Prabhakar Sail, the independent witness in the cruise drugs case, arrived at the Mumbai police commissioner’s office on Monday to meet senior security officials, a day after he claimed that Rs 25 crore was demanded by an NCB official and another person to let off Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan in the case, an official said.
Sail visited the police commissioner’s office apparently in connection with his security concern. He reached the commissioner’s office premises at around 11.20 am and met the Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Milind Bharambhe. On Sunday, Sail told media persons that he feared a threat to his life and had claimed he could be harmed.
Sail, the ‘independent witness’, had claimed that Rs 25 crore was demanded by an official of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and other persons, including absconding witness K P Gosavi, to let off Aryan Khan in the cruise drugs case.
He had said that he overheard Gosavi telling one Sam D’Souza over the phone, after Aryan Khan was brought to the NCB office following the October 3 raid, about a demand of Rs 25 crore and “to settle at Rs 18 crore as they have to give Rs eight crore to Sameer Wankhede”, the zonal director of NCB. He also claimed NCB officials had asked him to sign nine to ten blank papers.
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