Daily Californian


Updated Friday, October 27, 2000
News
Landlord Will Plead Guilty
Reddy faces nine felony counts, plea bargain hearing to take place next week

Lakireddy Bali Reddy

by WILL EVANS Daily Cal Staff Writer Wednesday October 25, 2000

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The Berkeley landlord charged with illegally importing Indian girls for sex,
Lakireddy Bali Reddy, will plead guilty to federal charges on Monday along
with several of his family members, according to court documents.
The plea bargain hearing for Reddy, his sons Vijay Kumar Lakireddy and
Prasad Lakireddy, his brother Jayprakash Lakireddy and his brother's wife
Annapurna Lakireddy, is expected to occur next week in Oakland Federal
Court. The charges they will plead guilty to were not specified by the U.S.
Attorney's Office.
Reddy, a UC Berkeley alumnus who owns Reddy Realty and Pasand Madras Indian
Cuisine and controls property, raking in more than $1 million in rent a
month, had been charged with nine felony counts, with a maximum sentence of
65 years in prison. Vijay Lakireddy had been charged with three, including
visa fraud, for helping to illegally bring the Indian girls into the United
States to work in Reddy's businesses.
The other family members had not been previously charged. For them, the
government will issue an "information," a form of charging often used when
the defendant and prosecutor agree on the charges, according to Assistant
U.S. Attorney Mathew Jacobs.
Lawyers for Reddy and his relatives all declined to comment or did not
respond to phone calls.
"We are just crying," said Hanimireddy Lakireddy, Reddy's brother who is an
assistant professor of medicine at UC Davis.
According to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office, the plea
agreements will not be made public unless the judge accepts them and they
are signed in court.
The investigation of Reddy, who is free on $10 million bail, and his son
started when police found the body of an Indian girl who died of carbon
monoxide poisoning and her sister, who survived, in an apartment on Bancroft
Way last November. A passing motorist saw men carrying a body and "dragging
a screaming woman" and notified police, according to a document filed by
Berkeley's city attorney.
Though Reddy is not being charged in connection with the death, police said
they discovered that the girls had false identities. Police also alleged
that Reddy had "imported" the two to have sex with him.
"The Berkeley Police Department and city manager believe there are many
other victims of defendant Reddy's actions and that he has been engaging in
this practice of importing poor young girls for sex for many years," the
city attorney wrote.
Jon Vicars, a Berkeley real estate broker who has known Reddy for 15 years,
said Reddy's charitable actions "far, far outweigh" any harm he may have
done.
"I think (the planned plea agreement) was more strategic than it was
claiming guilty to something," said Vicars, who, with many other landlords,
wrote letters to the judge in support of letting Reddy free on bail.
"Everybody's jumping on this guy to make him an example. It doesn't speak to
the fact of how many people he's helped."
Vicars said the father of the girls who suffered from carbon monoxide
poisoning had asked Reddy to take his children to the U.S. because he could
not support them by selling coconuts.
"It's a difference in culture," Vicars said. "Over there, people have a
different standard of living."
But City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, who is from India and played a key
role in the case, vehemently disagreed with the argument that culture makes
a difference.
"It is not cultural to molest minors," she said.
Albuquerque had requested that Reddy not be released on bail because he
presented a flight risk. The city estimated that Reddy and his family owned
$69,714,083 in real estate, most of it in Berkeley. She said he also
"hoarded gold and cash" in a suitcase under a bed in his house.
Reddy originally came to the U.S. 40 years ago as a chemical engineer to go
to graduate school at UC Berkeley, subsequently becoming a "pillar" of the
community, according to his brother.