The Central Administrative Tribunal has set aside the transfer of IRS officer Sameer Wankhede from Mumbai to Chennai, saying the revenue department “patently violated” its own transfer guidelines. Wankhede, a 2008 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, made headlines for allegedly demanding R25 crore from Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan’s family by threatening to implicate his son Aryan Khan in the Cordelia cruise drug bust case during his tenure in the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Mumbai in 2021.

The principal CAT bench comprising Justice Ranjit More and member Rajinder Kashyap found procedural lapses and potential bias in the transfer decision issued by the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance. The tribunal said while government officers had an all-India service liability, transfer policies must be implemented in a fair, transparent, and just manner.