The Central Crime Branch (CCB) is watching around 150 people who were in regular contact with the suspects arrested in the Sandalwood drugs scandal, besides analysing around 10,000 phone calls made by them.
A senior officer said they had collected the suspects' call detail record of the past year. Interestingly, two actresses Ragini Dwivedi and Sanjjanaa Galrani, who have been arrested in the case, didn't communicate with each other by phone, the officer said. For the CCB, the call detail record of Viren Khanna, a party organiser who's been arrested in the case, is the most important. Investigators are also checking pictures and video footage of the parties attended by the suspects.
Among other suspects are Shiva Prakash, a businessman, film producer and a close friend of Ragini; Aditya Alva, the son of former minister Jeevaraj Alva and the brother-in-law of Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi; Niyaz, a suspected drug peddler, Sanjjanaa's friend Rahul Thonse, Ragini's friend B K Ravi Shankar and others.
The CCB suspects that all of them had brought drugs from Loum Pepper Samba, a high-profile drug peddler from Senegal. Ragini and Sanjjanaa were not only seen as crowd-pullers but they also procured drugs from Samba, the officer claimed.
On September 9, DH reported how some serving and retired police officers were trying to protect the suspects. The CCB has now found that some of the suspects knew as early as in June that police were watching them. This was clearly established by WhatsApp chats between a few suspects. The CCB believes the suspects became cautious after that.
Documents submitted to the court include transcripts of WhatsApp messages exchanged between businessman Prashanth Ranka and Ravi Shankar. The messages are said to mention that drugs were being supplied to high-end parties since 2018. When Ranka got to know that police were watching drug peddlers of big parties, he warned Ravi Shankar on June 23 not to call the peddlers by WhatsApp or phone.
Some of the messages read: "Don’t call to peddlers, nope not having it from long time, big time tracking is going on, what happened, Sandeep Patil sir, how come bro, came to know yesterday from sources, thank you very much, take care."
According to police, they arrested Ravi Shankar on September 3 based on the evidence in a 2018 case. Another drug peddler Pratheek Shetty and two foreign nationals were also arrested in the 2018 case. A scrutiny of his phone call register showed that he was Ravi Shankar was also in contact with other peddlers. His WhatsApp chat with Ragini led to her arrest.
The remand application that the CCB filed for Ragini’s custodial interrogation states that Ravi Shankar had named Ragini and 11 other suspects who were organising parties and supplying drugs there through peddlers. Police also found WhatsApp messages between Ravi Shankar and Samba, which showed that he supplied drugs to many celebrities, including Ragini.
The police application also states that the suspects procured drugs from Punjab, Goa, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and abroad. In a conversation with Samba on June 16, Ravi Shankar said: "Get a very good stuff, 2G celebrity stuff. Earlier on April 12, Ravi had asked Pepper 'Give me less than 1 gram."
Samba messaged him on April 13: "No O is because its a rock form That is why a complete 1 G."
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