Actor Charmee Kaur on Wednesday morning appeared before the special investigation team (SIT) of the Telangana Prohibition and Excise Department in Hyderabad that is probing a drug racket.
Charmee is the seventh person from the Telugu film industry to appear before the SIT, which has summoned 12 persons, including directors and actors, for questioning in the case.
On Tuesday, the Hyderabad High Court rejected her plea that she should be questioned in the presence of her lawyer.
The court, however, directed the SIT to question her in the presence of women officers between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Also, her blood, hair and nail samples should not be collected without her consent, it said.
Since her debut in the Telugu film industry in 2002, Charmee has acted in Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam films too.
During the investigation of the drug racket that was busted here on July 2, names of some members of the Telugu film industry cropped up, the SIT had said.
So far, it has questioned art director Dharma Rao alias Chinna, filmmaker Puri Jagannadh, cinematographer Shyam K Naidu and actors P Subba Raju, Tarun Kumar and P Navdeep.
Actor Mumait Khan is scheduled to appear before the SIT on Thursday.
Nineteen people have been arrested so far and seven cases registered.
The SIT suspects that the racketeers supplied high-end `party drugs’ such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA, also known as ecstasy) to film personalities, employees of multi-national companies and school and college students in the city, among others.
