Sam D’Souza, who was named in allegations of a payoff between Sameer Wankhede, Kiran Gosavi, and Shah Rukh Khan‘s manager Pooja Dadlani in the cruise ship drugs case, claims he never knew about the alleged Rs 25 crore deal. He only set up a meeting between Gosavi and Dadlani, D’Souza told NDTV.
On October 24, Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness in the case who claimed to be the personal bodyguard of Gosavi had alleged that the latter, who was the private investigator seen in the viral selfie with Aryan Khan at the NCB office, had discussed monetary payoffs to be paid to Wankhede in a telephone conversation with D’Souza on October 3, the day Khan was arrested in the case. Sail also said that Gosavi, D’Souza, and Dadlani had a 15-minute meeting inside a car on the evening of the raid.
However, D’Souza claims he knew nothing about this deal. Adding that he was in Delhi all this while and would soon record a statement in the matter with the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that recently took over the case from Wankhede, the self-described ‘liaison man’ said he merely set up a face-to-face meeting between Gosavi and Dadlani.
Gosavi contacted him on October 1, a day before the drugs raid, through Sunil Patil, a “power broker” with important connections, said D’Souza. Hours after Aryan Khan’s arrest, D’Souza claims he had met Gosavi, who told him no drugs were found on Khan and they could help him. Gosavi wanted to speak to SRK’s manager and D’Souza got them in touch.
D’Souza further said he was present at the face-to-face meeting, where Gosavi – who allegedly had an NCB sticker on his car – had claimed to be an investigating officer and had also “saved his bodyguard Prabhakar Sail’s number as Sameer Wankhede (SW 2) to mislead” them.
Claiming that his life is under threat, D’Souza has reportedly asked for police protection.
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Meanwhile, on Monday, the SIT, which took over a total of six cases from the NCB’s Mumbai unit following the extortion allegations against Wankhede, dropped three of these cases, The Indian Express reported. The team will now continue to probe only three cases: the Cordelia drug raid case in which Aryan Khan was arrested, the case involving NCP leader Nawab Malik’s son-in-law Sameer Khan in which a chargesheet has already been filed, and the drug case involving actor Armaan Kohli who was recently arrested.
As per the report, the three cases that were dropped did not involve any well-known persons.