Lagatar24 Desk
Mumbai, Aug 13: The Cast Scrutiny Committee has cleared former NCB officer Sameer Wankhede in the caste certificate matter, finally putting an end to a year-long dispute.
The caste certificate that Wankhede possesses has also been upheld by the committee. The tribunal had taken down arguments from both side and concluded that Wankhede was not a Muslim by birth in a 91-page ruling.
Wankhede tweeted “Satyameva Jayate” in response soon after the development.
सत्यमेव जयते
— Sameer Wankhede (@swankhede_IRS) August 13, 2022
The committee also came to the conclusion that Sameer Wankhede and his father Dyaneshwar Wankhede had not converted to Islam from Hinduism.
According to the judgement, Sameer Wankhede and his father are members of the Hindu religion’s Mahar-37 Scheduled Caste.
The committee determined that Nawab Malik, a former cabinet minister for Maharastra and a prominent member of the NCP, and other complainants who had expressed concern about Sameer Wankhede’s caste certificate, including Manoj Sansare, Ashok Kamble, and Sanjay Kamble, had not provided sufficient evidence to support their claims.
The issue arose when Wankhede oversaw the Mumbai Narcotic Control Bureau last year.
Wankhede claimed that Malik, who was a cabinet minister at the time, brought up the subject of his caste certificate only after his team had detained Malik’s son-in-law Sameer Khan in connection with a narcotics case. After Sameer Khan’s release from prison in the second part of 2021, Malik began making these accusations.
The controversy surrounding the accusations made in the 2021 Drug Cruise case, in which actor Shahrukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was allegedly engaged, only served to amplify the anti-Wankhede rant.
Dyaneshwar Wankhede, a member of the Mahar community, was the father of Sameer Wankhede. Malik and others had made the claim that he had abandoned Hinduism and converted to Islam in order to marry his wife, a Muslim by birth. The accusations state that Wankhede was a Muslim by birth and had even wed a Muslim woman using Muslim traditions.
