The city police began their investigation into the links between Veera Sai Raghav Chowdhary, alias Sonu (25), who organised a rave party on April 13 at Rushikonda Beach in Visakhapatnam city, with inter-state drug gangs and his involvement in supplying drugs to youngsters in the city. The city task force (CTF) led by assistant commissioner of police (ACP), M Mahendra, arrested the main organiser, Sonu, on Saturday (20-04-2019) and is now focusing its attention on nabbing others involved in the case, with leads from Sonu.

Previously, the CTF police had arrested five youngsters in the rave party drug abuse case and seized small quantities of various forms of high-end, lethal drugs such as cocaine, LSD and MDMA.

Police said, Sonu is an engineering graduate and an event manager from Hyderabad who has organised parties at luxury hotels in the city and supplied high-end psychedelic drugs to revellers. The task force is investigating if Sonu is involved with organised drug smuggling gangs in Goa, Mumbai and other places in the country.

Police have also expressed surprise at the excise departments decision to grant permission to hold a liquor party at an open place in the city, especially as the April 13 event turned out to be a rave party. Sources also said that Sonu had obtained the licence from the excise department by citing the name of a TDP leaders son who had leased out the resort on Rushikonda Beach for the party. The police are likely to seek an explanation from the excise department on the matter of issuing a licence.

City police chief Mahendra Chandra Laddha asked the police to prepare a list of drug users under different police station limits in Visakhapatnam city to get more clues to nab the drug peddlers. Laddha also appealed to Vizagites to share with the police any information related to the drug trade in the city, stating that a drug culture would ruin the youngsters’ future.

It is expected that Sonus arrest will expose the nexus between the management of some resorts and hotels and drug suppliers in the coming days. The matter of the rave party has taken a political turn in Visakhapatnam with the BJP and YSRC demanding the arrest of the resort owner where the party was held. BJP leader P Vishnu Kumar Raju has said political patronage was involved in procuring the lease of the resort, while YSRC leaders have said some TDP leaders are behind the drug scandal.