Alia Bhatt’s Ex-PA Arrested for ₹76 Lakh Fraud, Fake Bills

Alia Bhatt’s Ex-Assistant Arrested For Rs 76 Lakh Fraud

Vedika Prakash Shetty, a previous personal assistant to a Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt, is arrested by the police at Mumbai on accusations of embezzling about 76.9 lakhs rupees belonging to the actress. The arrest was done in Bengaluru after considerable time seeking him as a complaint has been turned against the actor by the mother of Alia Bhatt, veteran actress Soni Razdan in January 2025.

High-profile news In 2021 Vedika Shetty, a former personal assistant of Alia Bhatt (2021 to 2024), was accused of conducting a systematic financial crime by defrauding both the personal account and the account of her production company, Eternal Sunshine Productions Private Limited. According to the claims, the total amount of irregularities was 76.9 lakhs of rupees and such irregularities happened during May 2022-August 2024.

The mode of operation as it was discovered through police investigations entailed the production of payment line accounts in bogus terms of diverse kinds of working costs. This is the cost that was allegedly spent on travelling, meetings and other professional matters. Shetty is claimed to have used the advanced imaging applications and professional tools to render these counterfeit bills to look real and authentic. These fake documents would then be submitted to Alia Bhatt to be signed and mostly under the pretext that they were daily operations and other financial clearances.
After getting the signatures, the money was said to be diverted. Inquisitions reveal that Shetty would start off by making the amounts to a bank account of a friend. This friend then would allegedly re-direct the money back to the personal account of shetty.

According to police sources, however, at this point, there is no indication that the friend was aware that these transactions were fraudulent or that he/she saved any of this money which was embezzled. The friend is under interrogation to facilitate in recovering the money.

The financial discrepancies arose when Soni Razdan – who is also a director at Eternal Sunshine Productions Pvt Ltd – saw suspicious events in the review of Bhatt’s personal finances compared with the company accounts. Razdan quickly lodged a complaint at the Juhu Police station and a case was registered under the relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, in particular criminal breach of trust and cheating.

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After the case was registered, Vedika Shetty reportedly went into hiding and was “constantly switching locations across different states” like Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Pune to evade arrest after allegedly stealing money from Alia Bhatt and Eternal Sunshine Productions Pvt Ltd. The Juhu Police commenced a massive manhunt for Shetty and were able to locate her in Bengaluru. After being arrested, she was brought back to Mumbai on a transit remand. Shetty appeared in front of a Bandra Magistrate Court on Tuesday, July 8, 2025, where she was remanded into police custody until July 10 for more questioning and to continue with the investigation.
This incident is extremely embarrassing for Alia Bhatt, with the incident exposing the vulnerability even high-profile individuals face when entrusting financial responsibility to someone they know intimately. The police are currently looking into Shetty’s bank accounts and other financial transactions in order to establish the full extent of the alleged fraud and to recover any money that was reported to have been stolen.

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