Ex-Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) official Sameer Wankhede has filed a defamation suit in the Delhi High Court against Netflix series “The Ba***ds of Bollywood”, a directorial venture of Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.
The series, premiered on September 18, has already garnered positive early reviews.
Wankhede, who headed the 2021 drugs-on-cruise case that led to the celebrity arrest of Aryan Khan (later withdrawn for lack of evidence), alleges the series shows him in a “false, malicious, and defamatory” way. He is claiming INR 20 million in damages, which he says will be given to Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital.
In his petition, Wankhede says that the show is intended to harm his professional and personal reputation.
He also mentioned that legal cases against Aryan Khan are still pending in the Bombay High Court and the NDPS Special Court, and the release of the show is “prejudicial and irresponsible.”
Who is Sameer Wankhede?
Sameer Wankhede is a 2008-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer from Washim district in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region. Son of a policeman, he was raised in Mumbai’s Sewri-Wadala area with his sister. He is married to Marathi actor Kranti Redkar.
Wankhede began his career with the Intelligence Bureau in Andhra Pradesh in 2006, later serving in Delhi. Over the years, he has worked with Mumbai airport customs, the central excise department, and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).
He became a national figure as NCB’s Mumbai zonal head during big-ticket drug cases after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput in 2020. It was under his watch that the NCB arrested Rhea Chakraborty, Bharti Singh, and Sameer Khan, winning widespread media coverage and political attention.
