No extortion bid made to let off Aryan Khan: NCB

New Delhi: The NCB is understood to have not found any evidence to corroborate the allegation of a bid to extort money from Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan to let off his son Aryan Khan following his apprehension by the agency’s Mumbai unit in the controversial drugs-oncruise case.

A vigilance probe was ordered by Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Director-General SN Pradhan immediately after Prabhakar Sail, a witness, claimed in an affidavit and in subsequent interactions with the media that Rs25 crore was allegedly demanded to let off Aryan Khan.

Aryan Khan, who was nabbed during the Cordelia cruise raids on October 2 last year and spent 22 days in jail, was given a clean chit by the agency last week due to a “lack of sufficient evidence”.

Sail, now deceased, had alleged that he overheard KP Gosavi, his employer and also a witness in the case, speaking over the phone with a person, named Sam D’souza, about a deal to finally settle the matter at Rs18 crore and out of this, Rs8 crore had to be paid to Sameer Wankhede, the then Mumbai Narcotics Control Bureau zonal director.

Sail, 40, died in April and the police said the cause of his death was a heart attack. The agency had called him a hostile witness after he made the allegations.

While Wankhede has denied any wrongdoing, Gosavi is currently lodged in a Pune jail in an alleged fraud case filed by the Maharashtra Police.

A final report of this vigilance inquiry, conducted by NCB deputy director-general (northern region) Gyaneshwar Singh, is expected to be submitted soon to DG Pradhan.