India
oi-Prakash KL
Former NCB zonal director Sameer Wankhede on Friday moved the vacation bench of the Bombay High Court seeking no coercive action against him in the Aryan Khan bribery case.
In his petition, he claims that the action in the case of Aryan Khan is being taken out of revenge. The bench will hear his plea at 2.30 pm today, ANI reported. It comes a day after he failed to appear before the central agency for questioning.
On the other hand, the Delhi High Court has granted protection from coercive action to Wankhede, booked by the CBI for allegedly demanding Rs 25 crore bribe to let off Aryan Khan in the drug case.
Aryan Khan Case: Sameer Wankhede Claims His Seniors Asked to Fight for Remand of SRK’s Son
His Advocate Shubhi Srivastava said Justice Vikas Mahajan granted the protection from coercive steps for five days with the liberty to approach the appropriate forum, PTI reported.
The central agency booked Wankhede and others for alleged criminal conspiracy (120-B IPC), and threat of extortion (388 IPC) besides provisions pertaining to bribery under the Prevention of Corruption Act on a complaint from the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), according to a report in PTI.
Aryan Khan was arrested in the alleged drug bust case on the Cordelia cruise ship on October 2, 2021, on suspicion of cocaine possession. He was granted bail by the Bombay High Court, 25 days later.
However, the officials of the special enquiry team (SET) of the NCB found several lapses and irregularities in the operation on the cruise ship. K P Gosavi and his aide Prabhakar Sail, now deceased, were included as independent witnesses while they had conspired to extort Rs 25 crore from Shah Rukh Khan.
In order to let Aryan Khan walk free, they negotiated the amount and brought it down to Rs 18 crore. They had even got Rs 50 lakh bribe as a token of advance, but it was returned later.
