Former NCB officer Sameer Wankhede appears at the Kopari police station
Former NCB Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede was transferred to Chennai on Monday. He has been transferred to the office of the Directorate General of Taxpayer Services.
This comes days after the Narcotics Control Bureau gave a green signal to Aryan Khan and five others, who were arrested in the case last year in connection to a drugs bust case. Last year, Aryan Khan had to spend 22 days in jail after his arrest.
Wankhede is an Indian Revenue Service officer and the finance ministry is the nodal authority to take the action against him. The government has asked the competent authority to take appropriate action against Wankhede for his alleged "shoddy" investigation in the 'drugs-on-cruise' case, sources said.
Wankhede was then Mumbai zonal director of the NCB and handled the initial investigation after an anti-drugs raid on a cruise. Aryan was arrested by the NCB on October 3 last year in the case.
He was granted bail on October 28 by the Bombay High Court which dismissed NCB's arguments and said it can not just rely on WhatsApp messages to make such grave allegations.
On November 6 last year, the NCB headquarters removed Wankhede from the probe and transferred the case from Mumbai to a Delhi-based SIT formed under its deputy director-general (operations) Sanjay Kumar Singh.
Officials of the NCB, which filed its charge sheet in a Mumbai court, said the names of Aryan and five others were not there due to "lack of sufficient evidence".
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