AMN / MUMBAI
Maharashtra minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik on Sunday called Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker Mohit Bharatiya (aka Mohit Kamboj) the “mastermind” of the cruise ship drug raid case in which actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan is one of 20 persons accused, and said that the Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede was part of a plot to “kidnap” Aryan for ransom.
Malik appealed to Shah Rukh Khan to come forward and support his fight against drugs: “I appeal to him not to get scared. If your child is kidnapped and ransom is sought and the parent pays it, he is the victim and not the accused.”
Addressing a press conference on Sunday, Malik said the NCB’s raid on Goa-bound cruise ship Cordelia on October 2 was “a plot to kidnap Aryan Khan for ransom, of which Mohit Bharatiya Kamboj was the mastermind.”
Kamboj was part of Wankhede’s “private army” which routinely extorted people for money by threatening them, Malik claimed and added that Wankhede set a trap for Aryan with the help of Kamboj’s brother-in-law, Rishabh Sachdeva.
The minister claimed Wankhede had met Kamboj at a graveyard in suburban Oshiwara.
“But, because of his (Wankhede’s) good luck, we couldn’t get the footage since police’s CCTV was not functioning. Hence, out of fear, Wankhede had lodged a false complaint that he was being stalked,” Malik said.
Wankhede wrote a letter to the Mumbai police commissioner on October 24 stating that he was being followed, and sought police protection.
Wankhede on Sunday responded to these allegations saying that he was a regular visitor to the Oshiwara graveyard as his mother was buried there and added that there are several CCTV cameras in the vicinity from which footage could be acquired to disprove Malik’s claims.