Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara) is certainly paying for his sins in EastEnders as, in the aftermath of the carnage he caused by bringing a drug syndicate to Walford, his life continues to crumble.
Perhaps the biggest victim of Ravi’s criminal enterprise was Harry Mitchell (Elijah Holloway), who was sucked into dealing after his best friend, Kojo Asare (Dayo Koleosho), initially flushed Ravi’s drug stash.
As Ravi’s operation grew and attracted attention from rival drug gangs and police, he okay’d his lieutenant, Okie Okyere’s (Aayan Ibikunle Shoderu) plan to cuckoo Kojo and, after Harry plotted alongside his dad, Teddy Mitchell (Roland Manookian), to bring the racket down, Harry found himself chained to a wall and force fed drugs by Okie, despite Ravi’s order to free him.
Harry eventually escaped with Kojo, though Okie’s further kidnap of his best friend lured Harry back into the lions den and as the two battled, a terrified Harry accidentally stabbed Okie with his own knife, killing him. Unwilling to let his son be tortured any further, Teddy took the rap and received a life sentence.
Harry’s return to the Square coincided with Ravi’s own. As Ravi, who had turned informant for the police to escape criminal charges for the drug operation was welcomed home by the Nandra-Hart/Gulati family’s excitement, sickened Harry plotted revenge alongside his mum, Nicola (Laura Doddington).
Nicola spiked Ravi’s drink, determined that he taste the medicine that Harry was subjected to for weeks, though her actions proved to be far wider reaching than either Mitchell could’ve ever predicted when Ravi, hallucinating visions of his evil dad, Nish Panesar (Navin Chowdhry), beat his son, Davinder ‘Nugget’ Gulati (Juhaim Rasul Choudhury) to a pulp.
Unable to wreak revenge on Harry and Nicola due to George Knight (Colin Salmon) and beloved girlfriend Priya Nandra-Hart’s (Sophie Khan Levy) intervention, Ravi turned to self harm.
Ravi’s mental health has continued to plummet as he’s watched Nugget struggle to readjust to live after the beating and suffer debilitating panic attacks.
Next week sees Ravi, still in a world of physical and emotional pain, promise to support daughter Avani (Aaliyah James) as she deals with the trial of Joel Marshall (Max Murray), who recorded them having sex and later released the footage online, devastating her.
While he intends to help Avani, he’s side-tracked by an urgent job in his role as a police informant and entirely misses the trial. Later, Priya isn’t shy about letting Ravi know just how furious she is that he let his daughter down, leaving him to fall even deeper into his self-loathing.
How deep will Ravi sink into the depths of despair and what consequences will his continued self-harming have on him? Can anyone save the drowning bad boy?
