Son Sought in Berkeley Sex Case
Police want to question him about alleged plot to smuggle girls from India
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Debra Levi Holtz, Chuck Squatriglia, Chronicle Staff Writers
Saturday, January 22, 2000
©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/22/MN31667.DTL


BERKELEY -- The son of a jailed Berkeley landlord was being sought last night by federal authorities investigating an alleged scheme to smuggle girls from India for forced labor and sexual exploitation.

Vijay Lakireddy, 30, owner of a Berkeley software company that has sponsored as many as 21 Indian immigrants as U.S. workers, is suspected of being involved with his father in bringing girls into the country, authorities said.

Lakireddy's father, 62-year-old Lakireddy Bali Reddy, is accused of using fraudulent visa applications to allow Indian citizens into this country to work at his Pasand Madras Cuisine on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley and some of the 50-plus residential and commercial buildings he owns in the city.

The immigrants included two teenage sisters whom Reddy is accused of sexually molesting. The revelations about Reddy came to light after the girls suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning in one of his apartments November 24. One of the girls died. Reddy's lawyer says he has done nothing wrong.

Half a dozen agents from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and Berkeley police officers went to the home of Reddy's son last night in an upscale neighborhood on Elmwood Avenue in Berkeley, hoping to talk to him. Lakireddy never showed up and the officers left after waiting for more than an hour.

``They (the agents) are just being difficult and uncooperative,'' said a man who answered the door, identifying himself only as a family member. ``We don't appreciate the impression it's giving our neighbors. We're trying to cooperate. We've always been an upstanding family that has tried to be helpful.''

Attempts to reach Lakireddy and his attorney last night were unsuccessful.

PROSTITUTION ALLEGED

In a federal complaint filed Tuesday, Reddy is accused of importing illegal immigrants ``for the purpose of prostitution and other immoral purposes.''

Federal authorities say he applied for temporary work visas for at least 21 Indian citizens to work at a company in Berkeley owned by his son. The company, Active Tech Solutions, has only three employees.

Lakireddy said Wednesday that his computer consulting firm is expanding and has been petitioning for skilled workers from India because there is a shortage of engineers in this country.

He denied any wrongdoing by himself or his father and accused the immigration service of conducting a ``witch-hunt.''

The agents who went to Lakireddy's house last night were apparently acting on sealed documents issued earlier in the day, granted minutes after his father appeared in federal court in Oakland requesting to be released on $1.2 million bail.

At that hearing, local and federal prosecutors portrayed Reddy as a man who was about to leave the country with girls he allegedly molested.

They said a search of his home Tuesday turned up airline tickets to India for himself and two of his alleged victims and a suitcase crammed with gold. The tickets were for a flight the previous day, three days after Reddy was arrested.

Prosecutors cited the airline tickets and gold to argue that Reddy be held without bail. Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said Reddy had ample resources to make bail and flee the country.

`POWERFUL MAN'

Albuquerque said Reddy owns $50 million in property in Berkeley alone and an additional $5 million in nearby areas. He also has many holdings in his native village of Vijawada in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

She said he travels there frequently and acts as a virtual president of a company town.

``Mr. Reddy is a very powerful man both here and in India,'' Albuquerque said. ``He can in a very real way affect the lives of the people in that village, . . . and he essentially controls the lives of the victims.''

More than 20 of Reddy's relatives and employees attended the detention hearing, many offering to help secure his release.

Reddy's elder son, Prasad Lakireddy, dismissed prosecutors' portrayal of his father's power as overblown. He said that far from being beholden to his father, the villagers were farmers who lived a self-sufficient life.

Federal Magistrate Wayne Brazil said he was inclined to set bail, saying Reddy had no criminal history. He asked for an accounting of all Reddy's assets in the Bay Area and abroad by Tuesday, when he will hold another hearing.

Any bond, he said, would be ``very high.''

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kennedy and Albuquerque said no bond would keep Reddy from fleeing. They said he has shown he can make false identities, passports and visas for his victims.

GOLD DISCOVERED

During the search Tuesday of the home he shared with his son and grandchildren, federal agents found a suitcase under his bed crammed with Swiss gold bullion, jewelry and other gold objects as well as $2,500 cash, prosecutors said. Agents also found $55,000 in cash at Reddy's realty office.

Prosecutors argued that the ``heinous and insidious'' crime was enough to bar his being released on bond. The victims, they said, had been molested frequently over four years, both in India and Berkeley.

``We ask this court to approach this case as a case that is a crime of violence,'' Kennedy said.

The prosecutors also said Reddy tried to hinder police from investigating the carbon monoxide poisonings in November at his apartment building at 2020 Bancroft Way, near Berkeley High School. Authorities concluded that the poisonings had been caused by a clogged heater vent.

Prosecutors said Reddy refused to call police after the dead girl and her unconscious sister were found and instead, with the help of family members, dragged the victims out of the building. A passing motorist offered to call 911, but Reddy allegedly said, ``It's none of your business!''

When questioned, Reddy gave investigators false names and relationships for the victims, sometimes acting as an interpretor, prosecutors said.

The girl who survived told investigators that she had been having sexual intercourse with Reddy in India ``since she was turned over to him by her parents at the approximate age of 12.''

According to an affidavit filed in federal court, a 20-year-old woman who was living with the sisters at the apartment also told federal agents that her father had sold her to Reddy because of economic hardship when she was 14. She said she had worked for him at property he owns in India for five years until he brought her to Berkeley last year.

Reddy's attorney, Ted Cassman, said that the allegations were false and that the family stood behind Reddy. His sons are willing to sign over a $2 million apartment building owned by the family in Berkeley as bond for their father's release, he said.

``The charges are completely untrue, inflammatory and salacious,'' Cassman said. ``And they destroy a man's reputation.''

He denied assertions that his client had tried to block the investigation of the carbon monoxide poisonings and said that Reddy had strong ties to the area that would keep him from leaving.


©2000 San Francisco Chronicle Page A1