Tollywood actresses Saira Banu arrested
HYDERABAD: Police commissioner A K Khan appears to be on a mission to weed out amorality in Tollywood. Barely days after busting a drug racket allegedly involving stars and starlets, the Task Force netted two actresses — Saira Banu and Jyothi Lakshmi — along with an Uzbek girl and 6 others in a call girl racket from the city’s upmarket Begumpet area.
But all the accused except the two actresses were booked under the Prevention of Immoral Traffic Act and taken to Punjagutta police station and produced before the magistrate around 4.30 pm. While the actresses were released on personal bail and recommended for counselling, the remaining six were remanded to judicial custody till Sept. 3. The ninth accused, Janardhan alias Johny, is absconding.
The arrests were effected in the fourth floor flat of Spring Heaven Apartments in Begumpet’s Umanagar late on Sunday night. A film dubbing assistant was the main organiser of the racket, police said. The prostitution racket surfaced exactly four days after a Task Force team arrested actor Ravi Teja’s brothers — Bharat and Raghu, their friend D Naresh — and a Nigerian drug peddler Chima Clement for possession of cocaine.
Later on Monday after being let-off, Saira Banu alleged that she had been ‘fixed’. In separate statements released to the electronic media, both the actresses denied the prostitution charge, adding that “they are witnesses in the case and had become a victim of the unhealthy media competition”. Saira claimed that she was called by a manager to the apartment which she assumed was a movie production house. “I was surprised to find cops when I went there,” she claimed. Jyothi had a similar tale. “Assistant director Kanakaparthy Ravi alias Chandu (one of the accused) had phoned me to come there to discuss a movie script.”
But Punjagutta inspector K Ashoka Chakravarthy belied their claim and told TOI that both the actresses had taken Rs 2,000 advance from two SIs who were sent as decoy customers. It was only then that the flat was raided and the police claimed to have shot the entire raid on a mobile phone. “Saira Banu and Jyothi were in two separate bedrooms, while the Uzbek national was in a third room with a customer. The two actress refused to open the bedroom doors and we had use force. We also had to forcibly bundle them into the police vehicle after conducting a panchanama in the flat,” the inspector said.
Twenty-three-year-old Saira Banu has acted in many small-budget movies and is known for her item numbers in films such as ‘Tik.. Tik.. Tik’, ‘100 Kotlu’, ‘Anaganaga Oka Roju’ and ‘Aranyam’. While 28-year-old Labala Jyothi Lakshmi has played the lead in ‘Hungama’, apart from other smaller roles, including the one of a prostitute in
‘Pellam Orelithe’.
HYDERABAD: Police commissioner A K Khan appears to be on a mission to weed out amorality in Tollywood. Barely days after busting a drug racket allegedly involving stars and starlets, the Task Force netted two actresses — Saira Banu and Jyothi Lakshmi — along with an Uzbek girl and 6 others in a call girl racket from the city’s upmarket Begumpet area.
But all the accused except the two actresses were booked under the Prevention of Immoral Traffic Act and taken to Punjagutta police station and produced before the magistrate around 4.30 pm. While the actresses were released on personal bail and recommended for counselling, the remaining six were remanded to judicial custody till Sept. 3. The ninth accused, Janardhan alias Johny, is absconding.The arrests were effected in the fourth floor flat of Spring Heaven Apartments in Begumpet’s Umanagar late on Sunday night.
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