Telugu film actor Ananda Krishna alias Nandu on Tuesday appeared before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Telangana's Excise Department, which is probing drug racket.
Nandu reached Abkari Bhavan, the office of the Prohibition and Excise Department, at 10 am, and the questioning started 30 minutes later.
A four-member team questioned him about allegations that he takes drugs and also has links with peddlers arrested in the case.
However, he was allowed to leave within three hours, as media persons saw him leave the premises after 1pm. He did not speak to reporters.
#Telangana #Excise SIT completed 12 days of interrogation, it was Nandu attended for enquiry for 3 hours today in connection wth #DrugsCase pic.twitter.com/DV9DGL5y0N
— kavitha Rao (@iamKavithaRao) August 1, 2017
Nandu began his film career in 2007 with 100% love in which he played a character caller Ajith, a role liked by the film buffs.
He also acted in Ram Gopal Varma's movies Ice Cream 2 and 365 days.
Nandu is married to popular singer Geetha Madhuri.
After his named first cropped up in the case, Nandu had uploaded a video on Facebook, denying that he consumes drugs or has links with peddlers.
The SIT on Monday had questioned actor Tanish Alladi for four hours.
Nandu is the 12th artist to be interrogated by the SIT, which has so far questioned top actors like Ravi Teja, Charmme Kaur and leading director Puri Jagannadh.
Actress Mumaith Khan, actors Tarun, Navdeep and Subbaraju were also among those quizzed in the case over last two weeks.
Teja's driver Srinivasa Rao was interrogated on Saturday, a day after the actor was questioned for over nine hours.
With the questioning of Nandu, the SIT has completed interrogation of the Tollywood personalities summoned in the case.
Their names cropped up when the SIT found their contact details in the call data of Calvin Mascrenhas, the kingpin of the recently busted drug racket.
However, investigators will likely call more Tollywood personalities for questioning, as many more names had cropped up during the first round of investigation.
The SIT has so far arrested 20 persons, including US citizen Dundu Anish, a former aerospace engineer who has worked with the NASA, a Dutch national Mike Kamminga, and seven B. Tech degree holders, most of them employed with multi-national companies.
Following allegations from some sections of Tollywood that the industry was being unfairly targeted, the Telangana government denied it, with Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao stating that those using drugs would be treated as victims and not as criminals. The state government said that it was focused on nabbing the peddlers and those who supplied the drugs only.
The racket caused a sensation as authorities also found that about 1,000 students of leading private schools and colleges in the city were using high-end drugs such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and MDMA (methylenedioxy-methamphetamine).
IANS inputs