Alleged Mastermind of Aryan Khan Case Says Tip-off Came From MP-based BJP Worker
Sunil Patil claimed to have been offered a place in the raid by a friend of Manish Bhanushali, but he refused.
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The tip-off about the Mumbai cruise drugs party whose raid led to Aryan Khan's arrest was provided to Manish Bhanushali (a witness for the prosecution) by Neeraj Yadav, a BJP worker in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, claimed Sunil Patil, NDTV reported. Sunil Patil has been accused by the BJP of being linked to the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra and of being the mastermind in the Aryan Khan case.
The complicated web of names in relation to this case seems to show no signs of untangling ever since the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) led by its zonal director Sameer Wankhede, arrested Shah Rukh Khan's son and 19 others for allegedly possessing drugs.
They were later granted bail by the Bombay High Court.
Sunil Patil now claims that while Bhanushali had sent him a list of people who would be on the cruise, the names of Aryan Khan and another accused Arbaaz Merchant were absent from the list.
Munmun Dhamecha's name however, was there on the list. She had also been arrested.
"I neither gave any tip-off about the cruise drugs party, nor am I the mastermind. The tip-off was given to Manish Bhanushali by Bhopal-based man Neeraj Yadav, a BJP worker in MP," Patil claimed to a local news channel, added NDTV.
Patil also said that one day before the raid, he, Bhanushali and K P Gosavi, another witness in the case who is now in the custody of Pune City Police, in a cheating case, were together in a hotel in Ahmedabad.
Patil says that he was asked by Dhawal Bhanushali, a friend of Manish Bhanushali, whether he would like to be part of the raid or not.
He further claimed that he refused to be a part of the raid and that when he refused to video-record statements about the case as ordered by Bhanushali, he was beaten up.
New names have started to emerge since Saturday, 6 November, when Mohit Bharatiya of the BJP alleged that Patil was closely connected with NCP leaders, like Anil Deshmukh and accused him of hatching the whole conspiracy around Aryan Khan.
Patil has admitted that he was close to the NCP from 1999 to 2016, but not anymore, and that he has never met Nawab Malik, the NCP minister who has created a furore around Sameer Wankhede in the recent past.
(With inputs from NDTV and Twitter)
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