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Mumbai: Nationalist Congress Party spokesperson and Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik was arrested by Mumbai police on Wednesday in connection with a money laundering case linked to the fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim. His arrest comes after his clash with ex-NCB chief Mumbai, Sameer Wankhede – who was then the officer in charge of the drugs-on-cruise case.
Malik, who was arrested after seven hours of questioning, said while being taken to the hospital following his arrest that he would not bow down.
Who is Nawab Malik
-Born in 1959 in Dhuswa village in Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district, Malik first came to Bombay when he was a three-month-old. Malik family had businesses in Mumbai so he was raised here in Dongri among his family members.
-Maharashtra’s cabinet minister in charge of minority development, Nawab Malik is a five-time MLA from Mumbai’s Anushakti Nagar. Mr Malik is one of the few Muslim faces in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which is largely seen as a Maratha-centric party.
-Spokesperson of the NCP, Malik is also known to be close to be its chief Sharad Pawar.
-Mr Malik started his political career with the Congress but later joined the Samajwadi Party post the 1992-93 riots. Now the Minister of state for housing and Auqaf in Congress-SP coalition government, Malik started to distance himself from the Samajwadi Party and on October 13, 2001 he was expelled from the party, after which he joined the Nationalist Congress Party.
-A part of then Congress-NCP government, Nawab Malik resigned as a minister in 2005 after the Justice PB Sawant Commission probing corruption charges against Ministers by social activist Anna Hazare, indicted him in a corruption case. Malik in his defence had claimed that the decision to favour the builder in the project was taken by the previous BJP-Shiv Sena government and not him.
-In 2009 when the Congress-NCP returned to power, Malik did not find a place in the Cabinet and was subsequently made a spokesperson of the party.
Nawab Malik was recently seen dragging now ex-NCB chief of Mumbai, Sameer Wankhede, in many fraud cases during drug-on-cruise case- in which Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan was detained by the anti-drug agency. To understand his hostility towards the ex-NCB chief, we need to look back in January 2021, when Malik’s son-in-law businessman Sameer Shabbir Khan was arrested by the Sameer Wankhede-led NCB team.
In January, the central agency had arrested a British national, Karan Sajnani and allegedly recovered 75 kg of marijuana, 125 kg of marijuana-related material and many cannabi buds imported from the US from him. Based on his interrogation, the NCB claimed to have found money exchanged between him and Khan. Following this, Malik’s son-in-law was summoned and on January 9, Khan was arrested by the agency. However, Khan was granted bail in September, but Malik had claimed that his son-in-law was framed.
Now, after the arrest of star-kid Aryan Khan in the drugs-on-cruise case in October, Nawab Malik levelled several controversial allegations against Sameer Wankhede- who had arrested Mr Malik’s son-in-law Sameer Khan in a drugs case in January 2021.
