SEX, CDS & ASTARLET’S DIARY
Tara’s arrest blows the lid off a sex and extortion racket targeting top policemen and politicians
Seldom has a starlet left tongues wagging as much as Tara Chowdary, 35, a former small-time actor in Tollywood and an alleged prostitution ringleader. In raids at her home on April 10, Hyderabad Police has recovered visiting cards, spy cameras, sexually explicit video and audio clips as well as a diary. The seizures reveal records of six MPS, 18 MLAS, influential politicians, eight police officers including a retired Additional Director General of Police ( ADGP), 20 businessmen—some from the film industry—as well as a number of rich students. Chowdary has, for the past seven years, allegedly been running a sex, blackmail and extortion racket.
Police investigations reveal that Chowdary and her husband R. Durga Prasad, 28, not only provided girls to the high-profile clients but also recorded phone conversations and videos to extort money. The police have called in forensic experts to verify the recordings and have also launched a hunt to arrest her recording assistant. Police say more than 90 video CDS of clients with Chowdary and other sex workers, supplied by her, were recovered during the raids.
But this is not all. Chowdary told a local court on April 11 that Assistant Commissioner of Police (Banjara Hills) E. Shanker Reddy propositioned her after she was taken into police custody between April 8 and 11. She also alleged that Reddy ordered a woman constable to assault her after she refused. She claims that the police have not only foisted a false case on her but also made extortion calls to
other people in contact with her, threatening to implicate them. Chowdary claims the CDS were created by the police to besmirch her reputation.
On March 31, Marepalli Lakshmi, 20, from Visakhapatnam, made charges of sexual exploitation against Chowdary on local channel HMTV. The police then registered a complaint and arrested her. Police say Chowdary lured girls by offering them film roles but instead forced them into prostitution. She will be in judicial custody till April 27. “Chowdary herself approached us some years ago to rescue her from the clutches of another woman running a sex racket. We managed to free her then,” says women’s rights activist Jaya Vindhyala.
Till now, Chowdary has managed minor roles in five Telugu films— Kalisochchina Adrushtam, Racket, Priyasakhi, Love Ticket and Maska. She developed contacts not just in Tollywood but also among politicians and officials. She allegedly built a call girl network extending to Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai, besides Guntur and Chilakaluripet in Andhra Pradesh.
Preliminary investigations have revealed that her list of victims also includes an influential businessman from the ruling Congress in the state and a former mayor of Guntur. The police are also probing allegations that she blackmailed a Congress MP. Chowdary reportedly used the extortion money for financing films and is all set to produce an untitled Telugu movie soon.
Chowdary, who is from Prakasam district and whose real name is Ravilla Rajeshwari, was first arrested by the Banjara Hills police from a brothel in 2005. She subsequently drew media attention in 2010 by filing a complaint against a sub-inspector in Guntur alleging that the policeman had tried to rape her maid. The raids have provided fresh material to the police to find out the truth.