Sandalwood drugs case: Crime Branch raids 5 Bengaluru pubs
Bengaluru: The Bengaluru police’s Central Crime Branch (CCB) raided five pubs in the city as part of its “crackdown” in the Sandalwood drugs case, police said on Sunday.
“The pubs were raided in the city on Saturday night after investigation in the Kannada film industry’s (Sandalwood) drugs case revealed that banned drugs had found their way into some of the pubs,” Joint Commissioner of Police Sandeep Patil said in a statement in Kannada.
The CCB, however, did not share names or location of the pubs that were raided.
The city police began a crackdown on the use of banned drugs in the Kannada film industry in August after noted film producer Inderjit Lankesh alleged that about a dozen Sandalwood actors were into drugs and there was a nexus between them and drug mafia.
Lankesh’s revelations about the rampant abuse of banned drugs in the multi-crore film industry came after the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) busted a drug trafficking racket in the city and arrested former Kannada television actress D. Anikha and two of her accomplices, R. Ravindran and M. Anoop, on August 26.
The central agency also seized huge cache of drugs from the accused, including 145 ‘Ecstasy’ or MDMA pills and Rs 2.2 lakh in cash. More pills were seized in follow-up raids.
The drug racket is suspected to supply recreational and party drugs to Sandalwood actors, children of VIPs, students and others.
Besides Kannada actresses Ragini Dwivedi and Sanjjanaa Galrani, over 20 drug peddlers, party organisers and others have been arrested in the investigation so far.