Highlights
- Ex-NCB officer Sameer Wankhede received a clean chit from the Caste scrutiny committee.
- He was being probed for allegedly submitting a fake caste certificate for getting a government job.
- The panel noted he belongs to the SC community and was not a Muslim by birth.
Sameer Wankhede news: Former Zonal Director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Sameer Wankhede received a clean chit from the Caste scrutiny committee in a certificate case against him. He was being probed for allegedly submitting a fake caste certificate for getting a government job. The panel noted he belongs to the SC community and was not a Muslim by birth. It said he belonged to the Mahar community which is a Hindu Dalit community.
The order was issued by the Social Justice Department of the Maharashtra government on Friday, an official said. Wankhede is an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer and the issue of Wankhede's caste was raised by former Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik. Apart from Malik, Manoj Sansare, Ashok Kamble and Sanjay Kamble had also raised the issue.
Soon after the announcement of his clean chit, Wankhede took to Twitter and wrote, 'Satyamev Jayate!'. Mumbai district caste certificate verification committee examined the complaints and passed an order on the same on Friday.
The order says that it was not proven that Wankhede and his father Dnyandev Wankhede renounced Hinduism and duly converted to Islam. It is proven that Wankhede and his father-in-law belong to the Scheduled Caste that is Mahar-37, the order stated.
Complaints filed by Nawab Malik and others regarding the caste claim of Wankhede and regarding the religion of the caste certificate are not substantiated, following which complaints are being rejected due to lack of the facts in the complaint, the order said.
Wankhede had come to limelight following the high-profile October, 2021 raids by the NCB on a Mumbai cruise after which the agency had arrested Aryan Khan, son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, and 19 others and claimed to have seized some narcotics too. The NCB had later given a clean chit to Aryan Khan.
