The thriller in the Aryan Khan Cruise Case just doesn’t stop to die down. Even the great detective Byomkesh Bakshi would have given up in disgust. Meanwhile, Aryan Khan, Shahrukh Khan’s son has been in dire straits for days. As per the reports, he is only drinking bottled water along with biscuits dipped in water! His parent’s money order of Rs 4,500 is the only thing keeping him alive. SRK did visit the Arthur Road Jail once and many have been saying that the father-son duo cried their hearts out. However, what the general media has been showing constantly over the past weeks, is actually not the exciting part here. The story is that the Narcotic Control Bureau’s zonal director Sameer Wankhede is an “extortionist” as revealed by a “panch” witness in the Aryan Khan Cruise case. Apparently, the fellow is now a hostile witness as he seems to have jumped ship and taken up residence in the ‘Save Aryan’ yacht. The shifty manner in which the gentleman acted and spoke on TV now puts the needle of suspicion squarely on him.
The NCB officer in the center of the “twist in the tale”, Wankhede, however, refused to be cowed down though his role has come under the shifting spotlight. He informed his bosses in the NCB and they chose to believe him rather than give credence to the rogue witness who had alleged Wankhede was hoping to make about Rs 8 crore. NCP minister in the Uddhav Thackeray government Nawab Malik was quick to jump in. “Wasn’t I saying the same?” he told the media. Now, not drawing conclusions, it is quite obvious that there are too many holes in the narrative. “Wankhede is anti-Bollywood and there is not an iota of doubt that Wankhede’s soul is sold to the Bharatiya Janata Party,” quipped NCP’s Nawab Malik and the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut. Both the influential persons want Sameer Wankhede pulled out of the Aryan Khan case because he can no longer be believed or trusted. His halo has evaporated and there is the mark of the devil on his head now. Sameer Wankhede’s friends are not amused. They say that the MVA is doing a repeat of “Arnab Goswami last year.” Notably, Malik had told Goswami he would commit suicide in jail. And now he has prophesied that Wankhede will be sacked and put behind bars! Wankhede, on the other hand, did not seem to care about the prophecy seriously till the rogue witness surfaced with his damning affidavit. It may have been this that prompted Wankhede to write to the Mumbai Police commissioner seeking protection from “precipitate legal action”.
Indeed, Mumbai is a lethal place for select members of the two-legged. Aryan Khan happened to be one of them. Now there’s Sameer Wankhede also. And in the melee, nobody knows who to trust and who to believe. It’s a power game and a political slugfest. Journalists tiptoe around politicians; media barons cannot think beyond advertisements lost and policemen are looking over their shoulders while shadowing suspects. To the common man, everybody related to Bollywood is drunk on narcotics. The astounding thing is these glittering stars of Bollywood, they refuse to come out of their vanity vans and admit that the drug menace is real. For them everything is surreal, cinema – the bioscope of 100 years before.
