NCB's Sanjay Singh, who gave clean chit to Aryan Khan in Cordelia case, takes voluntary retirement

Sanjay Kumar Singh, 59, Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB)’s Deputy Director General who headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that gave a clean chit to Aryan Khan, the son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, in the Cordelia drugs bust case, has taken voluntary retirement from the Indian Police Service (IPS).

IPS officer Singh, known for his no-nonsense approach, served in the Odisha cadre and gained recognition during his tenure in the CBI as Deputy Inspector General. He supervised numerous high-profile corruption probes and also worked with the Odisha police. Singh, who joined the NCB on deputation in 2021, applied for voluntary retirement on February 29, approved by the government. He confirmed his retirement citing personal reasons. Singh, currently serving as DDG (Southwest Region), is set to retire on April 30. In his role, Singh oversaw the investigation into the Cordelia cruise case, initiated by NCB’s Mumbai zonal unit under Sameer Wankhede. The case, involving the arrest of Aryan Khan and others, led to allegations prompting the NCB headquarters to assign the investigation to Singh’s SIT in November 2021.

In May 2022, the SIT gave a clean chit to Aryan, from whom allegedly no narcotic was seized, nor he was tested for consumption by the earlier NCB probe team, and five others in the case. Officials of the NCB, which filed its chargesheet in the Cordelia case in a Mumbai court against 14 persons, had said that Aryan and five others had not been named in the chargesheet due to insufficient evidence. NCB chief SN Pradhan had then told media in Delhi, “We have gone by the principle of evidence. We found physical and circumstantial evidence against 14 persons and against six there was insufficient evidence. We considered all facts found during the initial investigation and found no concrete evidence against Aryan.”

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Further, in May 2023, the CBI’s Delhi unit booked five people, including Wankhede, in connection with the Cordelia case, based on a communication from the NCB. The five persons were accused of conspiring to extort ₹25 crore from Aryan’s family for not booking him in the drugs case and subsequently obtained ₹25 lakh in bribe from them, according to the CBI. Refuting the allegations, Wankhede had then called the CBI action a result of “vendetta” on the part of a few NCB officials.

“The allegations that I had asked for ₹25 crore are false. The CBI action came one-and-a-half year after the incident. This is after the Mumbai police’s SIT probed the incident and filed a closure report,” the 2008-batch IRS officer had said. Based on the CBI case, the ED subsequently commenced a money-laundering probe in the case. Seeking a quashing of the CBI case, Wankhede had moved the Bombay High court last year that granted him interim protection against any coercive action, which has continued till today.

Wankhede filed a petition in the Bombay High Court against two Preliminary Enquiry probes initiated by NCB’s Mumbai unit under DDG Singh’s supervision. These probes and multiple notices served to Wankhede between November 2023 and March this year are related to alleged drug links in Bollywood after Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and a case involving the arrest of a Nigerian national for drug possession. Wankhede denied NCB’s allegations, calling the inquiries an ‘act of vengeance.’ One allegation involves an accused posing as a customer to entrap a Nigerian peddler, while the other concerns a drug case involving UK-based actress Sapna Pabbi. Pabbi claimed she had a medical prescription for the seized substance, which the NCB allegedly ignored.