Indian Revenue Service officer Sameer Wankhede has filed a complaint with Mumbai Police against RTI activist Ketan Tirodkar, accusing him of publishing a defamatory interview about him in the Cordelia cruise drug bust case. Wankhede, who is currently serving as Additional Commissioner of Customs, claimed that Tirodkar had uploaded the video on YouTube without verifying the facts and demanded a case be registered against him for defamation.
The Special Enquiry Team of the NCB had purportedly red-flagged lapses and irregularities in the investigation on Cordelia cruise ship conducted under the “monitoring” of Wankhede.
The vacation bench granted Wankhede interim protection from arrest till June 8 subject to the condition that Wankhede will not publish any material through WhatsApp, give press statements or tamper with evidence.
An independent witness in the 2021 Cordelia cruise ship “drug bust” case then allegedly demanded Rs 25 crore from the Bollywood actor’s family by threatening to falsely implicate Aryan in the case, a probe by the Special Enquiry Team (SET) of the NCB has revealed.