The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Friday took away the controversial Aryan Khan drugs case and five others from the agency's Mumbai zonal unit headed by Sameer Wankhede and transferred their investigation to its operations unit based in Delhi.

The action has been taken on "administrative grounds", and as these six have "wider and inter-state ramifications", they have been transferred to the operations unit in Delhi, NCB Deputy Director General (north-west region) Mutha Ashok Jain told news agency PTI.

He said the order for transfer of cases has been issued by NCB Director General (DG) S N Pradhan.

Wankhede, who is facing a number of personal and service-related allegations, will continue to be the zonal director.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik said this is just the beginning. Malik, for the last few days, has been attacking Wankhede especially after startling revelations by Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness in the Mumbai cruise drugs case.

Taking to Twitter, Malik wrote: "Sameer Wankhede removed from 5 cases including the Aryan Khan case. There are 26 cases in all that need to be probed. This is just the beginning... a lot more has to be done to clean this system and we will do it."

For the unversed, the NCB had arrested actor Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan and at least 19 others in the drugs on cruise case on the intervening night of October 2-3 and Wankhede is facing a departmental vigilance probe after an independent witness in the case claimed extortion bid by those involved.

(With PTI inputs)

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