Court permits CCB sleuths to collect hair samples of accused in Sandalwood drug case

The NDPS Special court on Friday granted permission to collect the hair samples of the accused persons in the Sandalwood drug scandal case registered at the Cottonpet police station.

The accused include actresses Ragini Dwivedi and Sanjjanaa Galrani, party organiser Viren Khanna and others. Sandeep Patil, joint commissioner of police (Crime) confirmed the court's permission to collect the hair samples of the accused persons.

The CCB officials had approached the court as the accused persons were not cooperating with the investigating officers to collect the samples. The CCB officials had taken the samples of Ragini and Sanjjanaa after their arrest and had sent them to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Hyderabad.

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The FSL had returned the samples citing that the CCB officials had not followed the standard procedures of submitting the samples of evidence. After that, the officials made efforts to collect the samples once again, but the accused persons didn't cooperate.

Currently, the accused persons have been lodged at the Parappana Agrahara Central Jail. The CCB sleuths will make the necessary arrangements to take the samples from them at the earliest and send the newly collected samples to FSL.

The hair follicle drug test will play a major role as evidence because it proves the consumption of drugs by the accused person.