MUMBAI: Sam D’Souza, one of the persons mentioned in the affidavit submitted by Prabhakar Sail, a witness in the cruise drug bust case, has claimed in a television interview that Shah Rukh Khan’s manager Pooja Dadlani had paid money hoping to save the actor’s son Aryan from arrest, but the money was returned when they realised it was not possible.

D’Souza, a businessman, alleged that Dadlani had handed over Rs 50 lakh to K P Gosavi, a witness in the case, but when he realised that Gosavi was a “cheat”, he asked him to return the money to Dadlani.

Sail, in his affidavit, had mentioned that Gosavi, Dadlani and D’Souza had met early October 3. A person arrived in a car and handed over Sail two bags, which he took to D’Souza at Trident Hotel. D’Souza counted the money and said it was only Rs 38 lakh, the affidavit said. Sail claimed to have overheard a conversation where Gosavi and others discussed demanding Rs 25 crore, of which Rs 8 crore was to be paid to NCB zonal director Sameer Wankhede.

“After much abuse and pressure, we managed to recover Rs 38 lakh from Gosavi, the rest we contributed and paid back to Dadlani and we understood that Gosavi was a cheat,” D’Souza told the TV channel.