The seizure, as per officials, is estimated to be worth over Rs 10 crore in the international market (about Rs 5K-7K per blot) and all the six who have been taken into custody, beginning late last month, are students and youngsters who wanted to make 'easy money' by remaining anonymous within the deep layers of secret internet-based apps and messenger service like WICKR.
Malik said he is forwarding a letter written by 'someone in NCB about the various illegal activities of Wankhede' to the agency's DG S N Pradhan.
The NCB has widened its probe into a recent seizure of about 50 kg of heroin from a house in south Delhi's Shaheen Bagh area with the arrest of three more people on Friday, officials said.
"Mobile phones of Deepika Padukone, Shraddha Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, Rakul Preet Singh, Karishma Prakash, Simone Khambatta and Jaya Shah have been seized," an NCB official said.
The agency had called him a hostile witness after he made the allegations.
Asthana is the 27th chief of the force and is expected to hold office till July next year, his scheduled date for retirement from service.
'The decision to arrest Aryan Khan was a consensual decision, not a one-man command.'
There has been an "exponential" rise in the seizure of drugs in India in the last five years with the darknet and the maritime route emerging as the most preferred modes of trafficking, NCB director general S N Pradhan said on Tuesday.
The Narcotics Control Bureau's special investigation team has found "grave irregularities" and gaps in the probe of the Mumbai drugs-on-cruise case, with officials saying its first team that arrested Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan did not follow rules like mandatory medical test of accused, video recording of the raids and corroborate evidence for WhatsApp chats.
The drugs seized include 3,089 kilograms of charas, 158 kg of Methamphetamine and 25 kg of morphine.
On legal front, Wankhede, who the NCB asserted has an impeccable service record, failed to get any relief related to an affidavit on the sensational extortion claims made by the independent witness, Prabhakar Sail, with a special court saying it cannot pass a blanket order barring courts from taking cognisance of the document.
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday conducted searches at the premises of former Narcotics Control Bureau officer Sameer Wankhede after filing an FIR against him and four others for allegedly seeking Rs 25 crore bribe for not framing Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan in the drugs-on-cruise case, officials said.
The NCB, which recently filed a charge-sheet in the drugs-on-cruise case, gave a clean chit to Aryan Khan.
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 PTI.
'We are also seeing the birth of new evil, the new face of drug distribution where human interface has reduced; consumers are using the Dark Web to source supplies and using cryptocurrencies as payment mode.'
The newly appointed International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman and BCCI's president-in-exile N Srinivasan and his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan were among those who were questioned by Supreme Court appointed Justice Mukul Mudgal panel members.
Bhatnagar is expected to take charge of the CRPF later this week as he is on an official assignment in Indonesia in the capacity of NCB DG.
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