On Friday (May 12), former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh’s suspension was revoked and all costs towards him had been dropped by the Maharashtra authorities. The similar day, the CBI registered a corruption towards IRS officer Sameer Wankhede, who as soon as headed the NCB Mumbai zone, for allegedly demanding a bribe of Rs 25 crore from members of the family of those that had been arrested within the Cordelia cruise ship “drug bust” case, together with actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.
Singh and Wankhede had each hit headlines in the identical yr, 2021, and each controversies had concerned not simply these two high-ranking officers but additionally highly effective politicians and well-known personalities. Here is a glance again at them.
What was the Param Bir Singh controversy?
Troubles started for Singh, who was on the time Mumbai’s prime cop, in February 2021, when a automobile with gelatine sticks was discovered outdoors Antilia — the residence of industrialist Mukesh Ambani. It led to a tussle between Singh after which Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, who accused the police officer and his workplace of committing “serious errors” relating to the incident.
Within a couple of days of the NCP chief’s remark, the police officer wrote a letter to then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, alleging that Deshmukh had set a month-to-month bribery goal of Rs 100 crore from Mumbai Police. The house minister needed to finally resign as a consequence of these claims and went to jail for round a yr.
In response, a number of circumstances had been registered towards Singh. He was first named in an FIR filed at Marine Drive police station in July 2021. It was registered on the criticism of Mira Bhayander-based businessman Sham Sundar Agarwal, who claimed that he was falsely implicated in a case by Singh and different cops and so they requested cash for not arresting him.
The similar month, at Kopri police station in Thane, one other FIR was registered towards Singh through which he was accused of exhorting cash from and threatening developer Shyamsunder Agarwal and his nephew Sharad. Then, in August 2021, the officer was named together with dismissed police official Sachin Waze and two others in an FIR filed at Goregaon police station for his or her alleged involvement in an exhortation case associated to a hotelier.
Two extra circumstances had been registered towards Singh. One was primarily based on the criticism of inspector Bhimrao Ghadge, who claimed that in his stint with Thane police, Singh, the then Thane Commissioner, requested him to drop costs towards an individual and extort cash. The different case was pertaining to the allegation of businessman Ketan Tanna. He had claimed that Singh together with different cops in addition to gangster Ravi Pujari extorted cash from him.
In April 2022, these circumstances had been transferred to the CBI on the Supreme Court’s order. The investigation company registered them afresh and recorded the statements of the complainants, following which they started probing the matter.
Singh was finally suspended in December 2021 and retired on June 30 subsequent yr. With his suspension now revoked, the previous commissioner will now be handled as on responsibility from the day he was suspended until his retirement.
What was the Sameer Wankhede controversy?
In October 2021, Wankhede led a crew of Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) officers to raid the Goa-bound Cordelia cruise ship off the Mumbai coast. He claimed to have seized 13 gm of cocaine, 5 gm of mephedrone, 21 gm of marijuana, 22 drugs of MDMA and Rs 1.33 lakh money within the raid and arrested 17 folks, together with Aryan Khan.
In the next days, alleging that Aryan had been a daily client of unlawful medication, the NCB opposed his bail pleas within the courtroom. The Bombay High Court finally launched him from jail after 26 days of the raid. Meanwhile, claims towards Wankhede and his crew emerged, saying that they had been making an attempt to falsely implicate Aryan. This led to the formation of an NCB Special Investigation Team (SIT) that carried out an inquiry into the alleged wrongdoings of NCB officers who had raided the Cordelia cruise.
The SIT, which dropped all the costs towards Aryan in May final yr, stated in its inside report, “It is strange to note that in spite of clear cut denial by Arbaaz (Merchant) – Khan’s friend from whom small amount of charas was seized – regarding involvement of Aryan in procurement or possession of drugs, the Investigating Officer started looking at WhatsApp chats of Aryan without even formally seizing his mobile phone. It appears the IO was motivated to somehow implicate Aryan Khan in the drug case.”
A supply informed The Indian Express that though Wankhede couldn’t discover any medication on Aryan, he continued to push the investigation towards him, as an illustration, by sending an NCB crew to Shah Rukh’s bungalow on October 21, 2021, in an ostensible “raid”.
Sources stated Wankhede had sought permission to look the actor’s premises however was refused. “So he prepared summons for recovery of some documents from Mannat and sent a team inside to serve the same. The media had been informed beforehand about an impending ‘raid’. It was finally a call from Delhi that stopped the team from going inside Shah Rukh’s house,” an officer stated.
CBI has now booked Wankhede, who’s presently posted within the workplace of Director General of Taxpayers’ Services (DGTS) in Chennai, and others beneath the cost of corruption.
“It has also been alleged that the accused persons entered into a conspiracy in order to extort an amount of around Rs 25 crore from the family members of the alleged accused… by threatening them of the accusation of offences of possession of narcotics substances as per the alleged directions of Wankhede being the supervisory officer. A token amount of Rs 50 lakh as bribe was allegedly obtained in furtherance of this conspiracy…,” a CBI spokesperson stated on Friday.