Sex, Drugs, Cops in Hyderabad

What goes on behind the Telugu film industry has been cast into the spotlight by a police force out to expose a secret world of Hyderabad’s powerful.

Even in the overwrought world of Telugu cinema, a mustachioed police officer taking on the high and mighty of Hyderabad would make a perfect script for a potboiler. But for the fact that the villain of the piece is the Telugu film industry, Tollywood, itself. 

Anyhow, it’s not everyday that a high-profile industry is shaken by arrests and allegations in the wake of a sex scandal and diary full of drug addicts that could include the industry’s who’s who—and with links to politicians. “We have a list of 65 people who are well known names in the film industry and kith-and-kin of VIPs in a diary seized from a Nigerian drug supplier. We are watching all of them closely,” warns Hyderabad’s Police Commissioner AK Khan, referring to a notebook found on Chema ‘Victor’ Clement, an alleged supplier of cocaine to two brothers of a young star, Ravi Teja. There’s another diary of appointments with bureaucrats, businessmen and film personalities that was recovered from a film producer who allegedly ran a prostitution racket with a bevy of starlets.  “The whole operation has been videotaped. If anyone doubts it, we can show them the evidence,” says Khan, speaking of Saira Bhanu and Jyothi, actresses who the cops say were nabbed offering sexual services (along with an Uzbek woman on an expired visa) at a flat they raided.

Khan has announced that Victor’s diary alone has some 500 contacts, including the list of 65 VIPs under watch that includes film personalities, politicians, businessmen and some bureaucrats. If leaks of the list are anything to go by, the city’s star snorters include Trisha Krishnan, a Tamil, Telugu and Kannada film actress, and the grandson of former Lok Sabha Speaker GMC Balayogi. 

The denials have been swift. Trisha denies any involvement with drugs, saying that someone is trying to tarnish her career. Balayogi’s son, Lok Sabha MP Harsha Kumar, denies that his son is an addict and has challenged the authorities to do a blood test. 

But the police say that cellphone logs reveal a direct connection between drug peddlers and VIPs in Hyderabad, and Khan isn’t about to drop the case in a hurry. “Nine pubs and a dozen liquor joints are engaged in drug activity,” he says, “We are keeping a tab on big businessmen, bureaucrats, film artistes and kin of affluent parents by setting up a special cell to help crack the drug and sex links.”

According to Khan, the Telugu film industry is reeling under flops, and so many bankrupt producers and actors had turned to peddling drugs instead. The same desperation, he surmises, may have led the industry’s starlets to the sex business. That a financial crunch is altering behaviour is hard to deny. A few months ago, a broke director landed in custody after a failed burglary attempt. Cornered, the youngster jumped off a second-floor balcony and broke both his legs. Last fortnight, the 23-year-old film actor Mohammed Sameer Khan—he had a role in Hyderabad Nawabs—was arrested on charges of burglary; the cops recovered 14 laptops and 18 mobiles from him. 

The industry is caught in a cycle of high production costs, swelling theatre rents, unaffordable prints, tough distribution, competition from the idiot box, video/online piracy, lack of fresh faces, lousy ideas and bad movies. To add to the woes, the Telangana agitation has split loyalties down the middle. A few years ago, the industry used to produce 250-300 films a year. The average has slid to just 70 odd releases now. All this has been compounded by too many people chasing too few opportunities. Far too many extras, struggling actors, technicians, jobless directors and penniless producers are twiddling thumbs in the industry. Unable to keep up their pretence of luxurious lifestyles, they’ve ended up looking for a quick fix in sex and drugs.

Some of it is commercial. Some of it is casual. Late night parties often result in casual flings by film starlets in the quest of ‘network’ expansion for upward mobility within the industry. “There may not be any money involved,” says an insider, “but certainly, the bolder one is, the smoother the entry to the next level.”

By the claims of Jyothi on TV news channels, there is nothing sleazy about what she’s been up to. The busted actress, who played the role of a saucy sex worker in a film titled Pellam Oorelthe (‘If the Wife Goes to Her Parents’ Home’), was arrested in a sting operation at a posh flat in the city’s high-security Kundan Bagh area, home to many VIPs (including Khan). “I went there for a script reading for a new film,” claimed the curvy actress after her release on a personal bond, “I have nothing to do with any racket. When I was called, I went to the apartment. When I went there, Saira Bhanu was already there along with a foreigner and some other women. The police were also there in plainclothes—and they arrested me wrongly for being part of a ‘prostitution racket’.”

Further, Jyothi claims that it was all a set up—that she was being framed for not yielding to demands made by some film personalities and politicians: “When the door opened, Saira Bhanu was already there, and she was in police custody. The policemen took away our mobile phones and did not allow us to talk to our families.” Saira Bhanu, she adds, was unknown to her until then. And she saw the Uzbek woman only later—at the police station.

Apart from Pellam Oorelthe, Jyothi has done supporting roles in films like Golmaal, Kanchanamala Cable TV and Evarigola Vaadidi. Saira Bhanu’s accomplishments, in contrast, include a series of lead roles—though in soft-porn flicks like Tic, Tic, Tic, Aaroje (‘That Day’), 100 Kotlu (‘100 Crore’) and Inkosaari (‘Once Again’). Famous faces they may well be in Andhra Pradesh, and may have been let off on personal bonds (though the visa-less Uzbek girl, now in judicial custody, hasn’t been so lucky), but their credibility is under challenge from the cops. 

The police version of events goes like this. Late at night, an undercover group of the Task Force visited the apartment posing as customers, and they were led into a room with a set of fringe starlets and a young Uzbek. A police officer who saw the videotaped operation says the women were dressed in tight tank-tops, short skirts and figure-hugging jeans; also, there seemed to be some action on in one of the rooms. “They paraded before our undercover men. What were these women doing there if not waiting for customers?” he demands. The racket, say the police, was being run at that site for the last two months by a small-time film producer, Juvvala Raju (who was arrested along with the flat’s housekeeper Neelamani), and they had been led to the location by a lead generated by a drug crackdown earlier. The police also claim to have laid their hands on Raju’s diary of names and numbers—clients.

The police have not revealed the identities of the others arrested, but hint at the involvement of rich and famous ‘customers’ in the racket. It’s likely, feel many. This is not the first time that a Telugu film actress has been arrested for prostitution. In 2009, actress Seema was arrested in a raid in Hyderabad’s Tarnaka area. Her film career has nosedived since.

While the Andhra film industry has been doing badly, parts of the state have been doing quite well indeed. The infotech industry, for example, is a money spinner. Also, there is money gushing in from overseas. Together, they have fed a real estate boom that has concentrated money in the hands of many in Hyderabad. 

Till five years ago, nobody in Hyderabad could identify foreign cars easily, says a local fixer. “These prized possessions were called either a Mercedes ‘Benj’, thanks to the logo on the hood, or a ‘foreign car’. Now people can identify not just the brand but also whether the car is a C Class or S Class Mercedes—at a single glance,” he marvels.

The modern day nawabs of Hyderabad, often seen in slashed thigh-hugging jeans, white shoes and glittering shirts, are the city’s brash young stars who go flitting from pub to pub in their fancy cars and SUVs, followed by retinues of friends, relatives and hangers-on. 

High-end intoxication has a long history in the city. The actual nawabs of Hyderabad, who ruled the erstwhile state before 1948, used to encourage the cultivation of ganja—marijuana—for the use of their nobles and armed forces. While the infantrymen and cavalrymen no doubt loved their fix, Hyderabad’s nobles, dressed in their finery and headgear, took special care to grow and produce their own stock for themselves. 

This is not an option available to the new nawabs, but it’s an open secret that the forests surrounding Hyderabad, Narsipatnam in Warangal and Nalgonda, have large tracts of land under active marijuana cultivation. In fact, it’s a source of protection money for Maoists of the region; the sums run into crores. The forests’ output joins the drug trail that runs alongside the pilgrimage routes of Tirupati, Sabarimala and Shirdi, say the police, and all this has enriched quite a few people in Hyderabad. “Lower quality drugs like hashish come through here, while cocaine is the preserve of Africans,” says a city police officer.

Hyderabad’s pubs are nodes in the network. Though the city has no pub culture of the kind in Bangalore or Mumbai, one bumps into the same revellers at most places, especially on Friday nights. Money flows as easily as the spirits here, as youngsters flaunt their newly acquired girlfriends and dancing steps. Once in a while, they make trips to the loo and return with Cheshire cat smiles. Joints have been smoked, powdery trails have been snorted, it’s clear.

Victor, a regular on the circuit, was said to be particular about his Indian friends. Most foreign students—there are 300 from Africa alone in the city—tend to maintain little social contact beyond their immediate circle of acquaintances at work or study. Victor attracted the suspicion of the police for the peculiarly large set of associations he had in the city. As it turns out, he has been an illegal resident in India after his visa expired in 2008, and took to sourcing drugs from South Africa via Bombay for a roster of rich clients in Hyderabad.  

The cops had been on Victor’s trail for a few weeks. The last time they tailed him, they got their quarry. He was caught with 40 gm of cocaine. He was also caught red-handed selling one gram of cocaine each to two local youngsters—identified as B Raghunadha Raju and B Bharat Raju, younger brothers of Ravi Teja and struggling actors themselves. The two are now in judicial custody. 

The shock of this case was yet to subside when another film director was arrested for peddling drugs. “If I sold 10 bags (each pouch with 1–5 gm of cocaine or marijuana, worth Rs 15,000–20,000), it would fetch me 50 per cent commission,” says the former film director, currently in the slammer. 

According to the police, film people had been roped into the trade by Nigerian and Ugandan students who had overstayed their visas in response to political instability back home and were looking to make a quick buck here. But it’s all over now, they claim. The police are in possession of a reliable list, and those involved shall not escape. 

Four Africans allegedly involved in the drug trade were picked up by the police only days ago. The Central Crime Station of Hyderabad is also investigating the case of two Ugandan nationals, Patrick Emario and Ayebare Donald, who were arrested on 21 July. On 3 August, the police arrested 27-year-old Okechukwu Ozhazruike, a Nigerian. 

Some of the big local names that have been leaked have already rattled the city’s glitterati, and the panic hasn’t subsided yet. In all, it’s a sordid tale of desperate men supplying drugs and desperate women selling sex to more or less the same set of clients, many of them with social statures to retain. The police claim to have enough evidence against them. The question is, how far will Khan go?

HyderabadsexTelugu film industry