Drugs-on-cruise case: CBI questions accused Sam D’Souza in connection with alleged demand of Rs 25-crore bribe
New Delhi, June 20
The CBI on Tuesday questioned accused Sanville alias Sam D’Souza for over eight hours in connection with the alleged demand of a Rs 25 crore bribe from actor Shah Rukh Khan for not implicating his son Aryan Khan in the 2021 Cordelia cruise drug bust case, officials said.
The agency called D’Souza again on Wednesday to continue with the questioning, they said.
Last week, the agency gave a third notice to D’Souza who had allegedly brokered a deal between Shah Rukh Khan’s manager and a witness, K P Gosavi, for helping Aryan in the case, they said.
D’Souza appeared before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday in compliance with the notice issued by the agency under Section 41-A of CrPC to appear before the investigating officer of the case at its Delhi office.
He arrived at the agency headquarters at around 10.30 am and was questioned till around 7 pm on various aspects of the case, including its timeline from October 2 to 3, 2021, when the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) raided Cordelia Cruise Ship claiming to have busted a drug racket, officials said.
Aryan Khan was arrested by the NCB on October 3, 2021, a day after the NCB raid on the cruise ship. He was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 28, 2021, after spending 25 days in jail.
This was the first time CBI questioned D’Souza in the case registered by the agency on May 12. D’Souza is listed as accused number five in the CBI FIR.
“Questioning is over. He has been called again tomorrow,” D’Souza’s lawyer Shiv Dutt Bakshi told PTI.
Former Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) zonal director Sameer Wankhede, the main accused in the case, has been granted interim protection by the Bombay High Court till June 23.
The much hyped case took a twist when an “independent witness” claimed in 2021 that Rs 25 crore was demanded by an NCB official and other persons, including Gosavi, to let off Aryan Khan.
Prabhakar Sail, the “independent witness”, now deceased, had told media persons that he had overheard Gosavi telling D’Souza over the phone about the demand of Rs 25 crore after Aryan Khan was brought to the NCB office after the October 2, 2021, raid.
“It has also been alleged that the said persons entered into a conspiracy to extort Rs 25 crore (approx) from the family members of the alleged accused of the case of NCB, Mumbai, by threatening them of the accusation of offences of possession of narcotics substances as per the alleged directions of then zonal director (Wankhede) being the supervisory officer,” a CBI spokesperson had said after the registration of the FIR.
The NCB on May 27, 2022, filed a 6,000-page charge sheet against 14 accused, giving a clean chit to Aryan Khan. NCB officials said Aryan Khan and five others were not named in the agency’s charge sheet due to the “lack of sufficient evidence”.
Besides, the NCB SIT found “grave irregularities” and gaps in the probe, the officials said, adding that the central agency’s first team that arrested Aryan did not follow rules like a mandatory medical test of the accused, video recording of raids and corroborate evidence for WhatsApp chats.