Bengaluru Police raided actor Vivek Oberoi’s Mumbai residence on Thursday in connection with the sandalwood drug scandal probe. They were looking for former Karnataka minister, the late Jeevaraj Alva's son Aditya Alva, who is the brother-in-law of Oberoi; Aditya is one of the prime accused in the drug case.
Among the 17 accused, it is Aditya Alva and two others who have been eluding the police net. “We had reason to believe that Aditya was in Mumbai. Besides, we also wanted to question his relatives regarding his whereabouts,” a CCB source was quoted in the media as saying.
However, insiders say that Aditya would not have chosen Vivek’s place even as a last choice of refuge considering that the latter’s place would be a dead giveaway. Sources say that the raid on Vivek Oberoi’s house was intended to mount pressure on Aditya to surrender. It was also to find out if he had slipped away from India through Mumbai using high-profile connections.
Police sources said at around 1 pm on Thursday, two inspectors with the CCB in Bengaluru began searching Oberoi’s residence in Mumbai after a search warrant was obtained from a court in the city.
Earlier, the Bengaluru police had raided Aditya’s farm house called House of Life on the outskirts of the IT city and allegedly seized CCTV footage of the parties held there. CCB claims that Aditya allegedly threw several ‘lavish invitees-only’ parties at this resort, attended by celebrities. Drugs were allegedly procured, distributed and consumed at these parties. He was reportedly close to high-profile party organiser Viren Khanna who was nabbed in Delhi.
So far, the CCB has arrested 14 persons in connection with the case, including actors Ragini Dwivedi and Sanjjanaa Galrani. All of these people are accused of being part of a drug racket that bought and distributed drugs in Bengaluru.
It was on September 22 that the CCB issued a lookout notice for Aditya Alva after multiple attempts to locate him failed.
