Read Time: 05 minutes

Synopsis

A division bench of the Bombay High Court comprising Justice AS Gadkari and Justice SG Dige on Wednesday allowed Former NCB Officer Sameer Wankhede to amend his plea to add 3 new additional grounds to his plea seeking quashing of CBI FIR.

Former NCB Officer Sameer Wankhede has sought the following three grounds to be added to his plea before the Bombay High Court. 

1) As per the amended provision of Section 7A Prevention of Corruption Act, the bribe giver should also be prosecuted along with the bribe taker. He pointed out that the bribe giver was not being investigated in the FIR registered by CBI and not even separately.

2) The sanction granted by NCB under section 17A is not correct as it did not have the authority.

3) Wankhede was being investigated for disproportion of assets but Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with the same was not added in the FIR.

As Senior Advocate Abad Ponda argued on the following three grounds, Advocate Kuldeep Patil opposed the submission on the grounds that the same was not mentioned in the pleadings. 

Senior Advocate Abad Ponda then sought leave from the court to amend the plea and add the three grounds 

The bench made it clear that it would not allow further amendments to the plea. 

The division bench will now hear the case on 20 July. The interim protection granted to Wankhede was extended by the court till the next date.

The CBI had registered an FIR against Wankhede for allegedly trying to extort money from Bollywood Actor Sharukh Khan when his son Aryan Khan was arrested by Wankhede in Cordelia drugs cruise bust case.

Wankhede had approached the high court seeking to quash the FIR registered against him by the CBI. He claimed that he was employed by the Central government, receiving a salary from the finance ministry. He submitted that he was working with NCB on a loan basis. 

CBI claimed that it had obtained prior sanction to prosecute Wankhede whereas Wankhede claimed that the sanction was bad in law as sanction was required to be given by the finance minister and not by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Case title: Sameer Wankhede vs CBI