Hyderabad: Telugu actor Ravi Teja, appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) Teja on Thursday, as part of the on-going money laundering probe, in connection with a high-end drugs racket caught in the city, in 2017.
Ravi Teja is one of the celebrities, among actors and directors, to be summoned by the ED on the probe. More than 10 Tollywood celebrities including famous filmmaker Puri Jagannath, actors Nandu and Rana Daggubati, actresses Charmee Kaur and Rakul Preet Singh, have appeared before ED, as a part of investigation. The investigation agency has also interrogated Calvin Mascrenhas, a musician, who was among the three-member gang arrested by Telangana’s Prohibition and Excise department on July 2, 2017 for allegedly vending narcotics as part of the racket.
Several cases related to the drug trafficking were registered and over 20 people were arrested by the investigation agency, including a Dutch national, a US citizen, who was a former aerospace engineer and had worked with the NASA, a South African national besides seven B.Tech degree holders, working with multi-national companies in the city. The racket involved delivering high-end drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and methylenedioxy- methamphetamine (MDMA).
The names of some Tollywood celebrities came out during the interrogation of persons arrested, in connection with the racket. The racketeers placed orders through ‘Darknet’ and the drugs were delivered by couriers, including from overseas.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Prohibition and Excise department, as part of its investigation had also queried the alleged drug-links with Tollywood, and had then questioned 11 people connected to the industry, including actors and directors besides the driver of one of the actors. The investigators suspected that the clients of the gang include film personalities, employees of MNCs, school and college students.
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