Actor Sanjana Galrani, whose residence was searched earlier on Tuesday and who was later taken in for questioning as part of the Sandalwood drugs bust case, has been formally arrested by the Central Crime Branch of Bengaluru police. She has been remanded to five days police custody.
As part of the process, the actor was taken to the KC General Hospital in Bengaluru for a mandatory health checkup and COVID-19 test.
Sanjana is a multilingual actor who has acted in over 45 films, predominantly in Kannada and Telugu. Her younger sister, Nikki Galrani, is also an actor who has acted in over 25 Tamil and Malayalam movies. Earlier, sources had said that two mobile phones were seized from her residence.
The Kannada film circle has come under scrutiny for alleged drug use after the Narcotics Control Bureau foiled an international drug trafficking racket in multi-city raids in August. It was then that the arrest of a kingpin led the police and the NCB to find drug trafficking networks among the Sandalwood industry.
Sanjana was under the CCB’s scanner following the arrest of her friend Rahul Shetty. According to police, Rahul was involved in ensuring celebrity presence in high-profile parties and procuring drugs for them.
Rahul and Sanjana along with another Mangaluru-based party planner Pruthvi Shetty were running an event management company and police have claimed that parties organised by this company were a hotspot of drug consumption and sales.
The arrest comes after on Friday, after Ragini Dwivdi, Sanjana’s colleague in the Sandalwood industry was the first celebrity to be arrested in connection with the case.
Other than Ragini, police have arrested another high-profile party planner Viren Khanna, alleged drug peddlers Loum Pepper Samba, Rahul Tonse, Prashanth Ranka and Niyaz in connection with the case. The police are still looking for Vivek Oberoi’s brother-in-law, Aditya Alva, who has been named as ‘accused number 6’ in the case. The prime accused and Ragini Dwivedi’s long-time friend Shiva Prakash is yet to be arrested.
Both Ragini and Viren are now in police custody.
Simultaneous raids were also being conducted at the residence of Viren Khanna, the party planner, who was arrested on Friday. Viren was arrested by the CCB in New Delhi.