‘Charges against Wankhede serious, prelim probes must’

Mumbai, India – January 06, 2023: Sameer Wankhede, former Mumbai zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau

In an affidavit filed in the Bombay High Court, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) has stated that its two Preliminary Enquiries (PE) against Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Sameer Wankhede when he was Mumbai zonal director of the agency were necessary, as the allegations levelled against him were of serious and grave nature. The NCB requested for a dismissal of the petition filed by Wankhede against the agency’s fresh notices to him.

Last week, the high court had restrained the NCB from taking any coercive action against Wankhede till April 10. The next hearing is next Thursday.

One of the two complaints, as reported by HT on April 2, received by the NCB pertained to alleged irregularities in the arrest of a Nigerian drug peddler, from whom the agency had recovered cocaine. The NCB, Mumbai, had allegedly asked an accused arrested in a separate contraband seizure case in 2021 and who was in the agency’s custody then, to pose as a customer and contact the Nigerian peddler on telephone in a bid to entrap the peddler. The Nigerian peddler was charge-sheeted in the case by the agency subsequently.

In the case related to the Nigerian peddler’s arrest, the man who was in NCB’s custody then and was used to entrap him, had recently complained to the Office of the DDG (South Western Region) that he was allegedly induced, threatened and used in another seizure, NCB told the court. According to NCB, the complainant alleged that no NCB officer was present when he was meeting the peddler, which made him feel at risk. He said that the incident was not mentioned in the chargesheet against him.

The other complaint was linked to the agency’s purported drug case involving a UK-based actress Sapna Pabbi as part of its wider investigation into alleged drug links of Bollywood, after the untimely death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput in June 2020.

In January this year, the Office of the DDG received a plea from Pabbi, a British national, through her representative, with regard to a pending Look Out Circular (LOC) against her that she said had no valid reason.

According to her, the NCB had asked her to appear before it in connection with the Bollywood drugs case and the seizure of two strips of Clonazepam tablets, which were allegedly recovered along with the prescription of a doctor from her Mumbai residence, in her absence when she was abroad. She alleged that she had informed the NCB via email that she was out of the country whenever she received its notices for appearance, and that she would cooperate with the probe whenever she would come to Mumbai or via the virtual mode. The then NCB investigating officer of the case, however, allegedly did not make her responses a part of the chargesheet and only relied upon the notices sent to her to create an impression that she was not co-operative.

WhatsApp screenshots

The NCB also submitted that unlike Wankhede’s claims, NCB’s Deputy Director General (DDG) (South Western Region), Mumbai, Sanjay Kumar Singh, who is supervising the PE probes, was never Wankhede’s reporting authority during his stint in the agency and that the latter allegedly attempted to misguide and divert the court’s attention with WhatsApp screenshots in his petition. Wankhede’s lawyers had claimed before the court that Singh cannot be impartial as he was the former’s reporting authority in both the cases.

The NCB told the court that at the time the irregularities in the two cases allegedly took place, then DDG (south west region) Ashok Mutha Jain was his reporting authority, not Singh who was then DDG (Operations) and Delhi-based. The WhatsApp screenshots did not show that Singh was his reporting officer, the agency has said.

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