NCB official Sameer Wankhede presents service and marriage documents to prove he is SC – Times of India

The NCSC has already issued a notice to Maharashtra government for facts on the issue to be submitted by Friday and has also sought evidence from marriage registrar and other bodies to ascertain the facts about Wankhede’s religion.

NCP minister in the Maharashtra government Nawab Malik has alleged that Wankhede is a Muslim who had fraudulently claimed the SC status to qualify in government service.

NCSC chairman Vijay Sampla told TOI that Wankhede submitted his caste certificate which was issued in 1995, while he joined the government service and got married in 2006. He said according to the papers shown by the officer, he had declared himself a Hindu in the marriage register and his child after birth was also declared a Hindu. “We are ascertaining the facts. If he is found to be a Hindu, then he is SC,“ Sampla said.

The commission vice-chairman Arun Haldar, however, asserted that Wankhede is an SC who was being targeted for nabbing the son of a famous person like Shahrukh Khan in a drugs case. Haldar said Wankhede told him that minister Malik was acting out of vendetta because he had arrested the minister’s son-in-law in a drugs case and the latter did not get bail for many months.

“Wankhede is a senior ranking official and a former IB officer. A person who has stayed in IB must have presented documents to IB which is a sensitive department that will never hire an employee who has a forged document,” he told TOI.

Backing Wankhede, Haldar said he was convinced about the officer’s claim after visiting his family last week. “What I witnessed there petrified my heart, seeing his family trembling with fear and the way they looked so helpless, I could not find any reason to suspect that Sameer would present a forged document,” he said.

Haldar also defended his statements made earlier in Mumbai, saying he was duty-bound to protect an SC officer from being attacked and that he had merely underlined the factual position that anyone who defies the Commission could face summons or even arrest, in response to Malik’s allegations.