News Analysis India

Tag: Kranti Redkar

  • Nawab Malik says he published photos of Sameer Wankhede’s former wife with her consent

    By PTI

    MUMBAI: Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik on Friday claimed that he made public the photos of the first wife of NCB officer Sameer Wankhede with her prior consent.

    The minister also said he has never said anything against Wankhede’s current wife, actor Kranti Redkar, and she should not play the “Marathi card”.

    Malik was asked by reporters whether it was appropriate on his part to use the photos of Dr Shabana Qureshi, the first wife of Sameer Wankhede, when the couple had divorced by mutual consent some years ago.

    Some BJP leaders too had raised this point.

    The NCP leader said when he received the photos from someone, he was told that the person (in the photographs) had agreed that they could be used.

    “Dr Shabana Qureshi was never willing to come forward or speak over this issue (earlier). When Sameer Wankhede started stressing that he is Hindu, they had to speak up. Her father then told everyone that they always knew Wankhede family as being Muslim,” Malik said.

    The state minority affairs minister also said he never made any comment or allegation against Kranti Redkar.

    “While she has been playing the Marathi card, I want to underscore the fact that I and my family have been living in Maharashtra for almost 70 years. Am I not a Maharashtrian?” said the NCP leader.

    Redkar should not forget that her husband was “part of a conspiracy to defame Maharashtra and Mumbai,” Malik further said.

    “I do not think a person will be saved only because he is a Maharashtrian, even if he belongs to certain caste or religion,” he added.

    Malik has levelled several allegations against Wankhede, the zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau, following a raid by the NCB on a cruise ship during which drugs were allegedly recovered and actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan was arrested along with others.

    The minister claimed that Wankhede got a government job in the Scheduled Castes category even when he was Muslim by birth.

    The NCB official has maintained that he is Hindu.

  • Amid allegations against NCB ‘s Sameer Wankhede, his wife Kranti seeks support from Maha CM

    By PTI

    MUMBAI: Kranti Redkar Wankhede, the wife of NCB’s Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede, wrote a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday, seeking justice in the wake of the “attack on her family and her personal life”.

    She posted the letter on her Twitter handle and tagged it to the Maharashtra CMO.

    Sameer Wankhede is in the eye of a political storm following allegations of extortion in the high-profile cruise drugs case in which actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was arrested.

    The officer is facing the departmental vigilance probe.

    State minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik had levelled a string of allegations against the NCB official, including illegal phone tapping.

    He had also alleged Sameer Wankhede was born as a Muslim, but forged documents, including a caste certificate, to show that he belonged to the Hindu SC category to get a job under quota after clearing the UPSC examination.

    In her letter to the CM, the NCB official’s wife, said, “Being a Marathi person, I expect some justice from your side as my personal life is unnecessarily being dragged into a controversy.

    Had late Balasaheb Thackeray (father of Uddhav Thackeray) been alive today, he would not have tolerated such personal attack on a woman’s dignity.

    “I see you as the torch-bearer of his teachings and leadership. The dignity of a woman has become a joke in the regime that draws inspiration from the tenure of 17th century king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj,” she said.

    Kranti Redkar, who is a Marathi actress, further said she is an artist and does not understand politics and is not interested in it.

    “The personal attacks reflect the lowest level of politics.

    I trust you and feel that there will be no injustice against me or my family,” she said in her letter to the CM.

    On Wednesday, she had said her husband was born as Hindu and he never changed his religion.

    She had also contested the claim made by the Qazi, who performed the first marriage of Sameer Wankhede in 2006, that he was Muslim at the time of the ‘nikah’.

    Kranti Redkar, who married Sameer Wankhede in 2017, had also slammed Malik for playing “low level” politics by making various allegations against her husband.

  • ‘Anti-Wankhede people threatening us, trolling us, we are living in fear’: Wife Kranti Redkar

    Talking to the media in suburban Andheri, Kranti Redkar, who is an actress, described her husband as an honest government officer and also refuted the extortion attempt claims against him.