BENGALURU: Aditya Alva, the drug accused and son of former JDS minister late Jeevaraj Alva, was arrested by the Central Crime Branch, Bengaluru City Police, from a resort in Chennai on Monday night after a four-month-long chase. He was brought to Bengaluru on Tuesday morning.“Alva’s arrest is an important development in the case. He and event manager Viren Khanna were the nucleus of City’s high-end drug parties,” said Police Commissioner Kamal Pant. Speaking to TNIE soon after the arrest, he said the CCB had been hunting for him since September, when he had fled the city.
“Aditya Alva has a vast and powerful network of people, but we got him finally. The CCB was following him closely and had covered his trail in Mumbai, Delhi, Gurugram and Mangaluru. They had searched his brother-in-law and Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi’s house in Mumbai. They had even sought information on him at the international border and were told that he had not fled the country. We had issued a lookout notice for him,” he said.
On Alva’s role in the drugs case in which the CCB had arrested Sandalwood actors Ragini Dwivedi and Sanjannaa Galrani, along with Khanna and others, Pant said, “ he was a big player. He and Khanna were promoting drugs in the city.”Asked if the recent drugs haul by the police had any connection with the Cottonpet FIR case, Pant said that was a different one. “We cannot compare this (Cottonpet drugs) case with the huge marijuana and other narcotic drugs seizure by the police. That is also an unprecedented seizure and is an ongoing exercise. In this case, Alva and Khanna were involved in arranging high-end drug parties in hotels, pubs and bars and at the former’s ancestral property – ‘House of Life’ – in Hebbal,” he added.
Asked about the international links and the presence of foreigners in these ‘elite’ drug parties, Pant said the CCB has shared relevant details with other sister agencies. “Our focus is on checking the drug menace in Bengaluru,” he added.Pant denied the allegation that the city police gave Alva a long rope, while they arrested the others. He said if that was the case, the police would not have countered his bail application in the Supreme Court.
“The allegations are cynical. We came to know that Alva had filed his bail application in the Supreme Court. We immediately took the government’s permission to hire the Solicitor General. The next day, Alva’s bail application was rejected after we put a caveat. Often, law enforcement agencies encounter operational difficulties. That doesn’t mean that we are not doing our job,” he said.The Commissioner said that at no stage was there any interference in the case. Last week the CCB had questioned Sandalwood producer Shivaprakash Chippi, who is accused number one in the Cottonpet NDPS case.