Bengaluru: More than 10 days after her arrest from the Bengaluru airport, on March 3, by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), for allegedly smuggling gold from Dubai, Kannada actor Ranya Rao has claimed that she is innocent and was physically and mentally tortured by Agency officials.
Ranya, who was denied bail by a special court on Friday, has lodged a written complaint with the additional director general of DRI. She has also moved the sessions court, seeking bail.
Now that Ranya has filed a formal complaint, the Karnataka State Women’s Commission can start an inquiry on the allegations of custodial torture. When a photograph of hers, with puffy eyes and a bruised face, was first circulated after her arrest, the Commission had said that it can only act on a formal complaint.
In her complaint, Ranya has stated that she was picked up by the DRI from inside the Emirates aircraft, in which she was travelling from Dubai to Bengaluru, and slapped with false charges. A DRI official from Delhi is allegedly trying to save another passenger, who was on the same flight.
A matter to be noted here is that Emirates is one of the two ‘flag-carriers’ of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The interiors of its aircraft are treated as part of the UAE and an enforcement agency from another country can only board with extant permission from its (UAE) government.
The DRI has been maintaining that Ranya preferred to pass through the Green Channel at Bengaluru airport after saying that she has nothing to declare. It was only after a metal detector beep that sleuths found gold bars, valued at Rs 12.56 crore, taped to her waist and calf.
Ranya has, however, denied all this. In her complaint, she alleged that after being taken into custody, DRI sleuths didn’t allow her to sleep till she was produced in court the next day. DRI officials, who Ranya says she can identify, allegedly slapped her 10-15 times and also denied her food. She has also claimed that she was made to sign 50-60 typed documents and 40 blank sheets of paper.
The DRI apparently threatened that her stepfather K Ramachandra Rao, a DGP rank officer of Karnataka, would be implicated in this case, if she refused to comply. The Karnataka government has already ordered a probe on the role played by Rao in allowing his stepdaughter to misuse certain privileges granted to officers of his rank.
The DRI has claimed in court that Ranya is part of a gold smuggling syndicate, after which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took up the matter.
