Cops raid Banjara Hills pub; Tollywood actress, singer among arrested
Hyderabad: In a predawn swoop, the Hyderabad police on Sunday raided a pub at Banjara Hills for operating beyond permitted hours and detained around 100 people, including Tollywood actress Niharika Konidela, Bigg Boss Season 3 winner and playback singer Rahul Sipligunj, former MLA Anjan Kumar Yadav's son Arvind Kumar Yadav, former TD MP Galla Jayadev's son Siddharth Galla and the daughter of a top cop in Andhra Pradesh.
The task force personnel raided the pub, Pudding and Mink, at Radisson Blu in the upscale Banjara Hills in the wee hours of Sunday as it was open beyond the permitted hours.
According to the police, over 100 persons including 48 women were taken into custody and placed at the Banjara Hills police station. The customers had a heated argument with the police officials stating that the police illegally detained them. Police sources also revealed that blood samples of 19 persons who were detained were taken and five white powder sachets recovered from the spot were sent to forensic labs for analysis.
Later, the accused released after booking cases under various sections of NDPS Act and the City Police Act. The investigation is taken up by the inspector of the Jubilee Hills police station.
The Task Force conducted a thorough check at the pub premises where they found the five small packets containing white powder suspected to be cocaine.
The packets were found in one of the plastic containers used for holding drink straws at the pub manager’s counter. The packets were in the possession of pub manager Mahadaram Anil Kumar. The police arrested Anil Kumar (35) and Abhishek Vuppala (39), partner of the pub. Another accused Arjun Veeramachineni is absconding.
The proprietors of the Pudding and Mink pub allowed only elite customers and their guests to have access to the pub. With the sole intention of earning money, they ran the pub till 4 am. A mobile app is being maintained by the pub management using which a code is generated for each customer and the customers can have access to the pub only after they enter the provided code at the main entrance, according to our sources.
Too many misnomers in police list of detainees
Numerous discrepancies have been found in the list of names and numbers released by Banjara Hills police with regard to the presence of 142 persons at the time of the raid at Radisson Blu’s pub on Saturday night.
Even though actor Nagababu and former member of Parliament Anjan Kumar Yadav went on record to say that their children were ‘only partying’, their names did not figure in the list of detainees.
Meanwhile, the name of the manager, Mahadaram Anil Kumar (35), later tagged as the prime accused in the case, was mentioned twice in the list. As were some other names and numbers. One of them said that they were from Udaipur but the telephone number was wrong.
The list also showed staffers aged 18 and 20, which are against the norms. Among the staffers was the name of Rahul Sipligunj. Some phone numbers in the list had 11 digits while some only had nine digits.
