Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik launched fresh attack on NCB officer Sameer Wankhede on Monday and questioned if his sister-in-law, Harshada Dinanath Redkar, was involved in the drug business.

Nawab Malik shared “proof” that showed Harshada Dinanath Redkar listed under “Respondent and Advocate” in a 2008 case registered under the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

The NCP leader tweeted, “Sameer Dawood Wankhede, is your sister-in-law Harshada Dinanath Redkar involved in the drug business ? You must answer because her case is pending before the Pune court.”

Speaking to India Today on Nawab Malik’s latest allegation, Sameer Wankhede said that he was not even in service when the case happened in January 2008. The NCB officer added that he only married Kranti Redkar in 2017, and asked how he is associated in any way with the case.

Meanwhile, Sameer Wankhede’s father, Dhyandev Kachruji Wankhede, has filed a defamation suit against Nawab Malik in Bombay High Court.

Wankhede’s lawyer, Arshad Shaikh, said Nawab Malik has been calling the Wankhede family “fraud and questioning their religious beliefs, saying they are not Hindus”. He added that Malik was calling everybody (in the Wankhede family) a fraud. Literally, on a daily basis,” and destroying the practice of his daughter Yasmin, who is a criminal lawyer and does not appear in narcotics cases.

The suit says that Malik has done “irreparable loss, damage, harm, prejudice to the name, character, reputation and societal image of plaintiff and his family members”.

Dhyandev wants a permanent injunction restraining Malik, his party members and all others acting under or on his instructions from publishing, writing or speaking in the media about him and his family members.