The Bengaluru police have registered an FIR against 12 people following investigations into the Sandalwood drug racket. With Ragini Dwivedi’s arrest and action against some more actors set to follow, Sandalwood is dreading the worst.
The 12 accused named in the FIR are Shivaprakash, Ragini Dwivedi, Veeren Khanna, Prashanth Ranka, Vaibhav Jain, Adithya Alva, Loum Pepper, Prashanth Raju, Ashwin, Abhiswami, Rahul Thonshe and Vinay.
Former Karnataka minister late Jeevaraj Alva’s son Aditya Alva, who is also the brother-in-law of Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi, is among the 12 accused.
The CCB police arrested drug peddler Ravi Shankar, an RTO employee, on Thursday, while Rahul Shetty (real estate agent), Dwivedi, and Viren Khanna (party planner) were arrested on Friday. Khanna was picked up from Delhi by the CCB sleuths.
As per Central Crime Branch (CCB), a clerk at the RTO named Ravi Shankar in Jayanagar was involved in securing drugs for various rave parties. Ravi and Ragini are close friends and many pictures of the two have also surfaced online.
The sandalwood scandal that was spilled by celebrity manager Prashanth Sambaragi, has taken a political angle. Sambaragi accused former minister BZ Zameer Ahamed Khan of having links with Rahul, who was arrested on Friday, Tourism Minister CT Ravi charged that a lot of political pressure was mounted to hush up the case against Ragini.
Speaking to the media, Commissioner Kamal Pant said, “We have been following the drug case for the past one month. While investigating a particular case, we received information that a person working in the government department is attending high-end parties and that he has links with an actor. We came to know that he was Ravi Shankar, a clerk in Jayanagar RTO. He supplied drugs to the parties he attended. The police officials questioned him and found crucial information on his phone.”
Loum Pepper Samba, a drug peddler, was arrested by the CCB for supplying drugs to Ravi and other celebrities.
