On March 3, sleuths from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) waited at Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), Bengaluru, for a “passenger of interest”, Z8195849. They reportedly had intelligence that the passenger, travelling on Emirates flight EK566 from Dubai, which was scheduled to arrive at 6:20 p.m., may be carrying gold — “either in crude form or as paste”.
The passenger was Harshavardhini Ranya (Ranya Rao), a Kannada film actor and the step-daughter of K. Ramachandra Rao, Director General of Police (DGP), Karnataka Police. As Ranya deboarded the flight and walked into the airport terminal, two personnel from the Karnataka Police greeted her. They were Basavaraj, head constable, International Airport Police Station; and Dhanush Kumar, constable, Karnataka State Intelligence. With the two of them providing her protocol services, Ranya walked through the green channel meant for passengers with no dutiable or prohibited goods, the DRI said in its report later. Ranya had walked through the same channel several times in the past after landing from Dubai, the DRI report added.
Also read: Kannada actress Ranya Rao admits to possession of 17 gold bars: DRI
However, this time, things took a different turn. The DRI said officials stationed at the exit of the green channel summoned her aside for checks. They asked if she had any gold to declare to Customs; Ranya said she did not. Two female officers then took the actor into a private room, where Ranya reportedly confessed to having hidden gold bars on her body, the DRI said. The agency claimed that it recovered “yellow metal bars with foreign markings” of 24 karat gold weighing 14.2 kilogrammes from her. The DRI said Ranya had used a crepe bandage on her calf and a medical adhesive tape on her waist to conceal the gold. They also found bars of gold in the pockets of her jeans and the soles of her shoes. The assayer estimated the gold recovered to be worth ₹12.56 crore. The DRI also detained Basavaraj and Kumar, who had been escorting her.
In his statement to the DRI, Basavaraj claimed that “as a gesture of courtesy, he had been, from time to time, instructed to provide protocol assistance to family members of senior officials”. He said he had been “asked by DGP Ramachandra Rao to assist his family members by providing protocol assistance” and had provided the service a few times to Rao earlier. He claimed that Ranya called him on March 3, informing him of her arrival from Dubai and requesting him to be present at the airport. He said he had no knowledge of any attempt to smuggle gold. Kumar simply tagged along with him.
However, on March 6, when her police custody ended and she was transferred to jail, Ranya wrote to the DRI chief from the Parappana Agrahara Central Prison, denying all the allegations against her. She disputed the mahazar she had signed at the airport on March 3, which showed that gold had been recovered from her. She claimed that she had been framed in the case, detained from the aircraft contrary to the DRI’s version of events, slapped repeatedly, and made to sign on around 40 pages.
How the case blew up
The case sent shock waves through the power corridors of Karnataka. Multiple Central agencies — the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Directorate of Enforcement (ED), and the Income Tax Department — joined the probe along with the DRI, which is rare for a gold smuggling case.
Also read: Following DRI inputs, CBI registers case to probe gold smuggling racket with international links
The Opposition, citing a speculative media report that said two Ministers in the State government were linked to the case, demanded that the government name them. The ruling Congress hit back saying 12 acres of land had been allotted by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board to a company led by Ranya during the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime.
A First Information Report was registered against Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, a BJP leader, for making “vulgar” remarks against Ranya, claiming that she had affairs with multiple politicians. He has since been expelled from the party for other reasons.
Also read: Political row erupts as B.Y. Vijayendra alleges complicity of Congress Minister in smuggling of gold
However, none of the documents submitted to the courts by any of the Central agencies mentions the involvement of any politician or minister. Speaking in the Karnataka Legislature Session, Home Minister G. Parameshwara claimed that the Central agencies had not informed the State of any details regarding the case.
The Karnataka government has sent Rao, who was posted as Chairman and Managing Director, Karnataka State Police Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation, on mandatory leave. An inquiry committee led by Additional Chief Secretary Gaurav Gupta was appointed to probe the misuse of police protocol and the role of Rao, if any, in the case.
In a press statement immediately after Ranya’s arrest, Rao claimed that he had no knowledge of gold smuggling. He said if Ranya had violated any laws, legal action would be taken against her. “I ask all of you to recognise that I too am a grieving parent,” he said. “I had no knowledge of such an unimaginable situation unfolding in my life.”
Only a mule?
Ranya’s statement to the DRI, which she has now disputed in its entirety, claimed that she was just a mule and was forced to carry the consignment. But multiple documents of the DRI, including its complaint to the CBI based on which the agency has registered a case, has indicated “a possible nexus with a coordinated smuggling syndicate, possibly operating from Dubai (UAE)”, and international links to the case.
After she was caught at the airport on March 3, in her statement to the DRI, which is part of the remand application submitted to the court, Ranya claimed that she got a bunch of Voice over Internet Protocol calls from foreign numbers over two weeks preceding her trip to Dubai. She said that a man “of African-American accent” told her that he would come in a white gown and hand over gold to her at Gate A, Terminal 3, of Dubai International Airport, which he did. She claimed that she saw YouTube videos to learn how to hide the gold handed over to her. She also claimed that she had been instructed to dump gold in an auto-rickshaw at a traffic signal at the end of the service road outside KIA and that this was the first time she had ever got gold from Dubai.
However, multiple documents accessed by The Hindu, including DRI applications before the court, and court orders, indicate that the agencies are not buying this theory. They believe that Ranya ran a company in Dubai, which imported gold to Dubai and smuggled it into India. The agency has also accused her of running hawala transactions to transfer the funds from India to Dubai to purchase gold.
Also read: Ranya Rao case: ED raids multiple locations in Bengaluru
Raids at Ranya’s residence in the posh locality of Lavelle Road in Bengaluru yielded ₹2.67 crore of cash and jewellery worth ₹2.06 crore. Ranya could not show sources for both, the DRI said. More significantly, her arrest memo, accessed by The Hindu, shows that the DRI recovered two Dubai Customs declarations dated November 13, 2024, and December 20, 2024 in favour of Ranya. However, on these trips, she did not declare any gold in Bengaluru and pay Customs duty. This indicates at least two prior instances of smuggling, sources said. DRI officials also recovered a Resident Identity Card issued by Dubai in her name.
DRI documents claimed that a forensic analysis of her phone led them to make the second arrest in the case — Tarun Raju, 30, a U.S. citizen and an Overseas Citizenship of India card holder, who is based out of Bengaluru. His arrest and a probe into the company that the two of them ran in Dubai paint a different picture of the entire operation, sources claimed.
Tarun is the grandson of a prominent hotelier and industrialist in Bengaluru. Tarun and Ranya knew each other from college. Ranya debuted as a lead actor in Manikya in 2014. She then starred in the Tamil film Wagah in 2015 and the Kannada film Pataki in 2017. Tarun debuted as a lead actor with the 2018 Telugu film Parichayam under the name Virat Konduru. However, opportunities dried up for both of them after these films.
Later, Ranya started a series of marketing firms, sources said. Ranya and Tarun incorporated a firm, Vira Diamonds Trading LLC, with a 50% stake to both in Dubai in 2023. This gave Ranya a resident card in Dubai and exempted her from needing a visa to visit the UAE, sources said. While Ranya was the sole investor, Tarun was a working partner and Ranya invested on his behalf. He exited the firm in December 2024.
The company was reportedly importing gold into Dubai, as the UAE doesn’t levy import duty on gold. DRI documents indicate that Ranya used to buy gold from wholesale suppliers in other countries, such as Switzerland and Thailand, making payments in foreign currency in Dubai.
Though the company had claimed that they were selling the imported gold in Dubai, it is now suspected that Ranya was smuggling it to India, making over 26 trips between 2023 and 2025. The remand application of Tarun reportedly details an instance where the company was cheated of ₹1.7 crore by suppliers. The DRI has claimed the payment was organised by Ranya through hawala channels from India to Dubai.
The modus operandi
Tarun played a key role in smuggling gold from the Dubai International Airport, the DRI has claimed in court. The gold that he and Ranya would allegedly smuggle from Dubai to India would be declared with Dubai Customs in the name of Tarun as being taken to either Geneva or Bangkok. After passing Dubai Customs, Tarun would hand over the gold to Ranya who would also be travelling the same day, said sources.
Though Tarun has argued in the courts, while applying for bail, that he exited Vira Diamonds in December 2024 and is in no way connected with the case, the DRI has claimed that on March 3, Tarun was also in Dubai with Ranya, and bought his air ticket with the money that she transferred to him. In his statement to the DRI, Tarun admitted that the purpose of his visit was to collect gold from a person and hand it over to Ranya. He collected the consignment, declared it as being taken to Geneva with Dubai Customs, handed it over to Ranya after passing through Customs, and travelled to Hyderabad, the DRI has claimed.
A senior Customs official said that the duo seems to have exploited two loopholes in the system in Dubai. First, while the company they had floated claimed to import gold and sell it in Dubai, they seem to have been “exporting” it back to Geneva or Bangkok, without raising red flags. Second, after they declared at Dubai Customs that they were taking the gold to Geneva, agencies there don’t seem to have realised that the two of them were boarding flights to India. Since Dubai Customs and India Customs do not have a channel of communication, their activities seem to have gone below the radar.
Gold smuggling is still lucrative
After returning to power in May 2024, the BJP-led Central government cut import duty on gold from 15% to 6%. This was expected to cut down gold smuggling. However, the practice remains lucrative, especially since gold prices have shot up over the past year, sources in the gold market said. A senior official who has probed smuggling cases said that after the cut in Customs duty on gold, smugglers are now being caught carrying the precious metal in large quantities, usually over 10 kg, to make a trip “viable.”
In another case flagged by the DRI to the CBI, two foreign nationals were caught trying to smuggle 21.28 kg of gold into India through Mumbai Airport days after Ranya was caught. “If someone successfully smuggles over 10 kg of gold and also sells it in the black market in India, they are bound to make around ₹50 lakh,” an official said.
The DRI has now alleged that Ranya was selling the smuggled gold herself. The agency arrested a gold trader, Sahil Sakariya Jain, from the north Karnataka district of Ballari, on March 26, accusing him of “assisting and abetting Ranya in disposing of the smuggled gold and sharing the sale proceeds.”
Earlier this month, the DRI raided two jewellery stores in Bengaluru. The ED raided a firm that gives loans against pledged gold. Ranya is alleged to have sold the smuggled gold through some of these channels, sources said. While the probe seems to have established the trail of gold, what remains to be probed is the money trail and any assets the accused allegedly acquired through the proceeds of crime, sources said.
Misuse of police protocol
The committee headed by Gupta has submitted its report to the State government. Sources in the government said that the report doesn’t conclude that Rao was involved. However, it reportedly says that prima facie, he knew that protocol assistance was being given to Ranya and she had used his official car to get home from the airport in multiple instances.
Meanwhile, sources in the Karnataka State Police said that as per the rules, only police officers with the rank of Inspector General of Police and above, and Indian Administrative Service officers with the rank of Joint Secretary and above, are eligible for police protocol at airports when they are on official trips. “But many senior officers and politicians have been abusing police protocol at the airport. No rule extends this protocol to the family members of officers. But no one imagined that this could be misused to carry out alleged criminal activities. It is high time this abuse of protocol stops,” a senior IPS officer said.
A senior Customs official said Customs usually “conducts random checks, and checks based on specific intelligence of contraband or passenger profiling.” But the officer conceded that if a passenger is accompanied by police protocol, they are usually not subjected to random checks. While a former Customs official argued that a full body scanner would help plug loopholes at the airport, the senior Customs official pointed out that full body scanners are deployed at departures for security purposes worldwide, and not at arrivals. Trials for full body scanners were held at multiple airports, including at KIA, as mandated by security agencies in 2023. But they are not operational yet.
Meanwhile, the CBI, based on a complaint by the DRI, has registered a case against unknown public servants of the Government of India under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and is probing officials who were posted at the airport during Ranya’s earlier trips, when she is suspected to have smuggled gold. Ranya and Tarun’s bail pleas have been rejected and both of them are lodged in judicial custody.
adhitya.bharadwaj@thehindu.co.in
This story was edited by Radhika Santhanam
Published – March 29, 2025 05:14 am IST
