Yet another independent witness in the cruise ship drugs case, in which Shah Rukh Khan‘s son Aryan Khan was arrested and later released on bail, has claimed the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) forced him to sign a blank panchanama (witness statement), Live Law reported.
Earlier, Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness in the case, had alleged that he was made to sign 10 blank papers by the NCB after Khan was arrested. Sail had also alleged that senior NCB officer Sameer Wankhede was aiming for a pay-off in the case.
According to the Live Law report, witness Sonu Mhaske has now approached a special NDPS court with an affidavit stating that NCB officials had threatened him with “dire consequences” if blank sheets were not signed by him. He further claimed that he was working as a facility manager in the building where a search and seizure operation against accused Aachit Kumar was carried out. Kumar was arrested by the NCB after his name had allegedly cropped up during interrogations of Khan and his friend Arbaaz Merchant (another accused in the case).
Mhaske stated that he had been forced to sign the panchanama on October 5 “under threat of false implication in a criminal case.” Further, as per his affidavit, Mhaske was threatened by an NCB officer, who told him he would be arrested for non-cooperation. The officer allegedly told Mhaske, “We are police officers and will take you to the lock-up and you will not come out for a long time.”
Recommended
The affidavit stated that the officer also asked Mhaske to bring one more person from the security office to sign the papers.
Meanwhile, a special NDPS court on Sunday granted bail to another accused in the case, Shivraj Ramdas Harijan. He was accused of supplying drugs to Khan and Merchant. The court stated that the NCB failed to provide enough evidence to prove the accusations against him.