Alia Bhatt's former personal assistant, Vedika Prakash Shetty, has been arrested by Juhu Police for allegedly defrauding the actress and her production house, Eternal Sunshine Productions. The alleged swindling amounts to over ₹76 lakh.

The police are currently investigating the matter and scrutinizing financial records to ascertain the full extent of the misappropriation. As of now, neither Alia Bhatt nor her team has released a statement regarding the arrest.

Alia Bhatt launched Eternal Sunshine Productions in 2021 with the aim of producing feel-good films. Their first film, "Darlings," co-produced with Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment, is available on Netflix. While this legal matter unfolds, Alia Bhatt remains engaged in her upcoming projects, including "Alpha" and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Love and War".

This isn't the first time Alia Bhatt's name has surfaced in connection to financial fraud. In March 2023, reports emerged about a gang forging government ID cards of several Bollywood celebrities, including Aishwarya Rai and Alia Bhatt, to obtain credit cards and defraud banks of approximately ₹90 lakh to ₹1 crore. In that instance, five individuals were arrested for creating fake PAN and Aadhaar cards. A representative from a Pune-based company that provides contactless metal credit cards and virtual cards filed a complaint alleging that the company had been cheated of ₹21 lakh through the use of these forged documents. The investigation revealed that the scam was carried out by gangs in Delhi and Jaipur, with IP addresses and mobile numbers linked to the fraudulent accounts being tracked back to these locations.