NCP chief spokesperson and Maharashtra’s minority affairs minister Nawab Malik fired yet another salvo at NCB’s Mumbai zonal director Sameer Wankhede accusing him of forging caste certificate.
Wankhede, however, denied the charges saying that the minister is launching personal attacks on him and breaching his privacy.
Malik is a close aide of NCP founder-president Sharad Pawar and a senior minister in the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government.
In a series of tweets on Monday, Malik targeted Wankhede, a 2008- batch Indian Revenue Service officer.
Malik tweeted a purported birth certificate and marriage photo of the embattled Wankhede with telling captions: ‘yahanse shuru hua farziwada’ (the fraud started here) and ‘pehchan kaun’ (guess who).
The birth certificate shows the officer’s full name as ‘Sameer Dawood Wankhede’, and the picture is from his (Wankhede's) first wedding with one Dr. Shabana Qureshi, with whom he has two daughters.
It may be mentioned, he later married Marathi actress Kranti Redkar, who has also played a small role in Hindi film Gangajal.
According to Malik, as per the birth certificate, Wankhede is a born Muslim but he charged that he appeared for the UPSC exams through a reserved category and became an IRS officer.
“He has forged the documents to get reservations in the (civil services) examinations and job…the fraud starts right there,” Malik told reporters in Aurangabad.
Wankhede, however, denied the charges. “I belong to a composite, multi-religious and secular family in true Indian tradition and I am proud of my heritage,” he said in a press statement.
“In this context, I would like to express that my father Dnyandev Kachruji Wankhede retired as Senior Police Inspector of the State Excise Department, Pune on 30 June, 2007. My father is a Hindu and my mother late Zaheeda was a Muslim,” he said.
Wankhede went on to add: “I married Dr Shabhana Qureshi in 2006 in a civil marriage ceremony under the Special Marriage Act, 1954. Both of us are divorced mutually through Civil Court under the Special Marriage Act in 2016. Later in 2017, I married Dinanath Redkar,” the statement reads
“Publishing my personal documents on Twitter is defamatory and an invasion of my family privacy. Pained by slanderous attacks by Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik,” he said.
Check out the latest DH videos here: