By PTI
MUMBAI; Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness, was questioned for more than 10 hours by the NCB’s Delhi vigilance team, probing the pay-off allegations in the cruise drugs case in which actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan is an accused, an NCB official said on Tuesday.
He has been called by the anti-drugs agency again on Tuesday, the official said.
Earlier, after being summoned by the NCB on Sunday, Sail along with his lawyer reached the Central Reserve Police Force’s (CRPF) mess in suburban Bandra under police protection at 2 pm on Monday.
He left the place, where the NCB team questioned him, around 12.20 am on Tuesday with his lawyer and did not speak to media persons present outside the premises.
“We have called him again for questioning on Tuesday,” NCB’s Deputy Director General (northern region) Gyaneshwar Singh said.
The NCB’s vigilance team, headed by Singh, who is also chief vigilance officer (CVO) of the federal anti-narcotics agency, had reached here from Delhi on Monday morning.
Sail, who claims to be the bodyguard of NCB witness KP Gosavi, last month alleged in an affidavit that he had heard Gosavi discussing a Rs 25 crore pay-off deal after Aryan Khan was arrested by the NCB.
Sail claimed that Gosavi had said Rs 8 crore of the deal money was to be given to NCB’s Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede.
Sail’s allegations had prompted the NCB to order a vigilance inquiry against NCB officials and others.
Wankhede had denied the allegations against him.
Last month, a vigilance team led by Singh came to Mumbai to probe the allegations of extortion, but had then failed to record Sail’s statement.
It had at that time recorded statements of eight persons, including Wankhede, and collected some important documents and recordings related to the cruise drugs case, an official earlier said.
Meanwhile, a Pune court on Monday extended by one day the police custody of Kiran Gosavi, an NCB witness arrested in a cheating case registered against him in the city.
Gosavi, one of the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) witnesses in the cruise drug sbust case of Mumbai, was produced before a Judicial Magistrate (First Class) after his current police remand period ended.
Seeking three more days of custody, public prosecutor Varsha Aslekar told the court that the police have recovered Rs 1 lakh from Gosavi in the 2018 cheating case in which he had allegedly duped one Chinmay Deshmukh to the tune of Rs 3.09 lakh by promising him a job in the hotel industry in Malaysia.
“The custody was sought as police want to recover some data from his social media accounts. The accused (Gosavi) is not cooperating with the police,” Aslekar told the court.
She added that police want to trace more women accused in the case, whose name had cropped up during the probe.
After submissions by the prosecution, the magistrate extended the police custody of Gosavi by one day.
This was the second time the court has extended the police custody of Gosavi, who was arrested last month.
The case in which he has been arrested was registered at the Faraskhana police station here.
Two more cases of cheating have been lodged against Gosavi in the city – at Cantonment and Wanwadi police stations.
Gosavi’s photos and videos with actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan went viral on social media after the NCB’s raid on the cruise ship off the Mumbai coast on October 2.
Aryan Khan, currently on bail, is one of the accused in the drugs case.
