The Bengaluru police have registered an FIR against 12 people following investigations into the Sandalwood drug trafficking.
On Friday, police raided the residence and subsequently arrested Kannada actor Ragini Dwivedi.
Shivaprakash, who allegedly produced some films, in which Ragini had acted as the heroine, has been named as the main defendant. Viren Khanna, who was arrested in Delhi and flown to Bangalore on Friday night, has also been named as one of the 12 defendants.
The other FIR-named individuals registered at Cottonpet Police Station include, Prashant Ranka, Vaibhav Jain, Aditya Alva, Simon, Prashant Babu, Ashwin, Rahul Tonse, Vinay, plus a Senegalese national Loum Pepper. The Senegalese citizen is said to have been the main supplier of medicines.
They have been charged under various sections of the IPC, including 120b (criminal conspiracy) and the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Act of 1985 under sections 21, 21C, 27A, 27B and section 29.
However, curiously, neither Ravishankar, a government employee of the RTO (regional transport office) who is said to be close to Ragini, nor Rahul Shetty, a real estate entrepreneur who have been detained, have been named in the FIR. Police sources told HT that the interrogation of both is “ongoing and there are many layers.”
Ragini’s bail bond is scheduled for Monday. Her mother had tried in vain to meet her in a women’s detention center and claimed that her daughter was innocent of all charges.
Meanwhile, in several unrelated incidents, the Karnataka police continued their sweep across the state against drug traffickers.
In the first case, the anti-narcotics branch of the Bangalore Central Crime Branch, the police arrested three people, Shejin, Vidhus and Subramani, an interstate gang for drug trafficking on Saturday. The police also seized 2.1 kg of hashish and 2 kg of ganja.
Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant said this was one of the “most significant seizures, especially of hashish, in the recent past.” The three arrested are from Kerala and are said to have been selling drugs in all the southern states.
Sandeep Patil, joint crime commissioner, said the trio would fill boxes of coconut oil with hashish and ship them. Vidhus, one of those arrested, has a master’s degree in computer science from a university in the UK, Patil revealed.
In another incident, Athani police arrested Sagar Kattikar and Gurulinga Dhole, said to be residents of Sangli, Maharashtra, on Saturday and confiscated 2 kg of marijuana. The police have registered a case and investigations are ongoing.
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