Who is Ranya Rao? Meet the Kannada actress arrested for gold smuggling |

Kannada actress Ranya Rao recently found herself in controversy after she was arrested at the Bengaluru airport as she was found smuggling gold.
The 31-year-old actress hails from Chikmagalur, Karnataka, she ventured into acting after completing her engineering degree at Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering in Bangalore. Her passion for cinema led her to train at the Kishore Namit Kapoor Acting Institute as per a report by Filmibeat.
Ranya made her acting debut in 2014 with the Kannada film ‘Maanikya’, directed by and starring Sudeep. In the movie, she played the role of Manasa, a young woman from a wealthy family and Sudeep’s love interest. Although her performance received mixed reviews, it marked the beginning of cinema.Following her debut, Ranya entered Tamil cinema with ‘Wagah’ in 2016. In this romantic drama, she starred opposite Vikram Prabhu as the female lead. In 2017, she returned to Kannada cinema with ‘Pataki’, a comedy film where she played Sangeetha, a journalist and the love interest of Ganesh’s character.
However, Ranya Rao recently found herself at the center of a major controversy. On March 4, 2025, she was arrested at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) for allegedly smuggling 14.8 kilograms of gold from Dubai. The actress, who is the stepdaughter of a senior IPS officer, had been under surveillance due to her frequent trips to Dubai. Authorities discovered that she had concealed the gold in her clothing and worn some of it to avoid detection. Ranya was remanded to judicial custody for 14 days, and investigations are ongoing to determine if she acted alone or was part of a larger smuggling network.