The legal battle over the high-profile cruise drug case took a new turn on Monday, with ex-pat Sameer Wankhede telling the Bombay High Court that he neither asked nor accepted bribes from the Bollywood superstar. Shah Rukh Khan to save his son Aryan Khan.
‘No demands, no bribes’: Wankhede’s stance in court
According to PTI, appearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Suman Shyam, counsel Wankhede Aabad Ponda asserted that the allegations leveled by the Central Bureau of Investigation are baseless.Ponda argued that there is “no evidence” to suggest that Wankhed demanded or received a bribe of Rs 2021 from Shah Rukh Khan in the 2021 cruise drug case involving Aryan Khan. The plea is related to Wankhed’s plea to quash the FIR registered against him by the CBI in May 2023 on charges of corruption and bribery.
Alleged by the CBI FIR
According to the FIR filed on 11 May 2023, Wankhed, along with former NCB SP Vishwa Vijay Singh, intelligence officer Ashish Ranjan and privates Kiran Gosavi and Sanville D’Souza, allegedly demanded Rs 25 crore from Shah Rukh Khan in return for not implicating him in the Aryan Khan case.The alleged demand was later negotiated up to 18 million, according to the agency.
The defense refers to the “lawful attack” and the lack of evidence
Wankhede’s lawyers said the raid on the Cordelia cruise ship was based on information received by the Narcotics Control Bureau and followed legal procedure. He added that several people, including Aryan Khan, were arrested under the law.
Aryan Khan’s arrest and then the clean chit
Aryan Khan was arrested on October 3, 2021, after the controversial attack on the coast of Mumbai. However, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the NCB later gave him a clean chit on 27 May 2022, saying there was no evidence linking him to a larger drug trafficking conspiracy.An internal probe by the NCB also flagged procedural loopholes, pointing out that Aryan Khan and Arbaaz Merchant were added at the last moment in the agency’s “information note”. It also highlighted irregularities in documentation, including records of Wankhede’s team’s seizures and recordings of statements. The matter remains in court.
