NDPS court permits Bengaluru police to carry hair test of accused

NDPS court granted permission to the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch police to carry out a hair sample test of accused in Sandalwood drugs case, Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Sandeep Patil confirmed to media.

Bengaluru: The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) special court on Friday granted permission to the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch police to carry out a hair sample test of an accused involved in a high profile Sandalwood drugs case.

High profile personalities including Sandalwood actress Ragini Dwivedi, Sanjjanaa Galrani, party organiser Viren Khanna have been arrested in this case registered in Cottonpet police limits.

Confirming this to the media, Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Sandeep Patil said that the NDPS court has granted the permission to carry out hair tests of accused Ragini and Sanjjanaa. "They remained non-cooperative to get their hair test done, therefore the CCB had approached the NDPS court," he said.

Ragini was arrested on September 4 and Sanjjanaa was arrested on September 8. They have been in jail under the police supervision for almost 91 days and 86 days, respectively.

However, the CCB is yet to track down three prime accused in this case such as Aditya Alva, a brother-in-law of Bollywood actor, Vivek Oberoi, Shivakumar Chuppi and Shaikh Fazil, who are absconding ever since the case came to light when the CCB arrested Ragini Dwivedi on September 4.

The CCB has also issued look out notice against Alva, who is also a son of former Karnataka minister, Jeevraj Alva and his mother Nandini Alva is also a very well known and influential personality in Karnataka.

It is worth noting here that the CCB had sent their hairs to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad. Soon after this, the CCB had claimed on October 3 that the samples were returned by the FSL-Hyderabad for not adhering to the "due process" while submitting such samples for evidence.

Then, the Bengaluru Joint Commissioner of Police Sandeep Patil had told reporters that this is the first time that a hair sample test is being done to get additional evidence though the CCB already has evidence in the form of technical data, eyewitnesses, mobile phone analysis, seizures.

Besides gathering other evidence, the police this time resorted to the hair test to strengthen the case in which actors, rave party organisers, realtors and African drug peddlers have been arrested since August after the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) first unearthed a racket.

Later, the CCB police launched its own crackdown into drug abuse and has arrested at least 15 people so far.

(IANS)