The four-year-old saga of Telugu film industry personalities coming under the scanner of Telangana Prohibition and Excise officials has roots in series of drug seizures in the first week of July-2017.
The Excise teams spent 20 days and around ₹50,000 to penetrate the network of drug suppliers, caught three alleged peddlers in the early hours of July 1 and seized around 700 blots of LSD and 35 grams of MDMA.
The seizures continued. The Excise officials and staff had to pose as customers to get a closer look into the drug supply system in Hyderabad.
More peddlers were caught. People in the State were shaken up when Excise officials said that regular users of the drug included students from prominent schools and colleges, and a prominent film producer.
Later, based on information from drug peddlers, Call Data Records (CDR), photos, and other evidence, the department sent notices to 12 celebrities from the film fraternity to appear before the Excise department’s Special Investigation Team (SIT). Some of the peddlers felt smug and dropped names of high-profile clients to whom they supplied narcotics and psychotropics.
After the notices were issued to film personalities in mid July-2017, limelight has shifted to the celebrities. They were questioned from July 19 to August 2.
What followed were attempts by officials to close in on truth. Some of the personalities might undergo drug detox sessions before attending the questioning session.
The officials thought through the questions that needed to be asked, when to put on table the photographs, CDR and other evidence gathered. Media personnel waited outside the Prohibition and Excise department office at Nampally throughout the time the celebrities were in the office building getting grilled by SIT. However, it still remains an open-ended case. Though several raids were conducted and drugs were seized in later years too, questioning of the film personalities remains to be the last high profile episode at the department.
