MUMBAI, March 24 -- Former zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Sameer Wankhede, told the Bombay High Court on Monday that he had neither demanded nor accepted a bribe from Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan in connection with the Cordelia cruise drugs bust, which involved the actor's son, Aryan Khan. "The FIR is restricted to demand of money by a private individual, not me," said Wankhede. Wankhede was booked for bribery in May 2023 for allegedly conspiring to extort Rs.25 crore from Shah Rukh Khan in lieu of allowing Aryan Khan off the hook after the October 2021 drugs bust on the cruise ship. He was later accused of accepting a bribe of Rs.50 lakh from the actor. Wankhede has challenged the first information report (FIR) registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against him and four others for allegedly demanding a bribe, before the high court in 2023. He has challenged it on grounds that it was registered long after the stipulated period of four months had elapsed under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act. He claimed the case against him was motivated by malice and vendetta. Counsel for Wankhede, senior advocate Abad Ponda, on Monday told a division bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Suman Shyam, "The allegation against me is that I demanded bribe through someone else. However, there is no proof, no material against me. There is no case against me." On October 2, 2021, a team from the NCB's Mumbai zonal unit carried out a search on the Goa-bound Cordelia and arrested Aryan Khan, his friend Arbaaz Merchant, and others, including two women. The NCB claimed it had seized some narcotics as well. In May 2022, the NCB gave a clean chit to Aryan and five others. The CBI's case is connected to revelations made by Prabhakar Sail, an independent witness in the NCB case. Sail, a panch witness, claimed in an October 23, 2021, affidavit that he had overheard a conversation between his employer Kiran P Gosavi, who was also booked in the case, and another person on the phone, proposing to demand Rs.25 crore and settling at about Rs 18 crore. The affidavit stated that at around 9.45am on October 3, the day after the drug bust, Gosavi had met Shah Rukh Khan's manager, Pooja Dadlani, along with a certain Sanville Adrian D'Souza alias Sam D'Souza (who was later booked in the case). They met outside Big Bazaar at Lower Parel. They met Dadlani in her car and left after about 15 minutes. Later that day, when they were at Gosavi's Vashi residence, Gosavi asked Sail to collect cash at a Tardeo traffic signal, the affidavit said. When he arrived at the signal in Gosavi's car, an individual in a white car handed over two cash-filled bags to him, according to the affidavit. Sail took the money to Vashi. In the evening, he said, Gosavi asked him to hand over Rs.50 lakh to Sam. Sail, accordingly, returned the cash-filled bags to Sam at a hotel in Mumbai. Here, Sam counted the cash and found it to be Rs.38 lakh....