The owner of the popular Hyderabad eatery Varalakshmi Tiffins, Sanikommu Prabhakar Reddy, is one among the three persons arrested by the Cyberabad police for allegedly consuming and peddling drugs.

The Mokila police and Special Operation Team (SOT) Rajendranagar on Sunday, September 10, apprehended three persons — a woman named Lingampally Anuradha (34), Prabhakar (38) who runs Varalakshmi Tiffins near DLF in Gachibowli, and another man named Venkata Shiva Sai Kumar (33). They seized 51.45 grams of cocaine cubes, and 44 pills and eight grams of MDMA (ecstasy), according to a press note. As per a report in The New Indian Express, the drugs seized were worth Rs 14 lakh.

According to the police, Anuradha had been purchasing narcotic substances from Goa and supplying them to her friends in Hyderabad. Prabhakar allegedly started consuming drugs after meeting Anuradha, and the two of them decided to purchase drugs at low prices in Goa, bring them to Hyderabad in private buses and sell them to their acquaintances at higher prices, police said.

Sai Kumar met Prabhakar at Varalakshmi Tiffins and asked for help to start a hotel named ‘Palleturu Pullatlu’ next to his outlet, and he too started to purchase and consume drugs from Prabhakar, police alleged. 

Police have registered a case under Sections 21(c) (punishment for contravention in relation to manufactured drugs and preparations where the contravention involves commercial quantity), 22(c) (punishment for contravention in relation to psychotropic substances where the contravention involves commercial quantity) and 29 (punishment for abetment and criminal conspiracy) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.