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Pune court remands drug kingpin Lalit Patil to police custody till Nov 7
Patil was handed over to the Pune police on Tuesday while his brother Bhushan Patil was brought to Mumbai late on Wednesday night after the Mumbai police got his custody the same afternoon
Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) AC Birajdar on Wednesday remanded drug kingpin Lalit Patil (34) and two others to police custody till November 7. The trio was produced before the Pune court by the crime branch officials amidst tight security.
Patil was handed over to the Pune police on Tuesday while his brother Bhushan Patil was brought to Mumbai late on Wednesday night after the Mumbai police got his custody the same afternoon. The two brothers are believed to be running a network of drug manufacturing plants across the state, one of which was busted by the Sakinaka police a month ago.
The Pune police had moved an application before the Andheri Court demanding custody of Lalit along with his associates Shivaji Shinde and Rahul Pandit alias Rohitkumar Chowdhary from the Mumbai Police.
Special Public Prosecutor Neelima Ithape in her submission before the court requested a 14-day custodial remand. However, Lalit’s lawyer Sandeep Bali objected to the custodial remand stating that there was a threat to his life from Pune Police as he was brutally assaulted by them during his admission in ward number 16 of Sassoon General hospital.
Bali said that Lalit was suffering from hernia related medical emergency where surgery has been recommended by the doctors. There are two first information reports (FIR) lodged against Lalit in the city.
Pune police were on the lookout for Lalit since he gave their security cover a slip and escaped from the Sassoon hospital on October 2. The factory raided by the Sakinaka police on the outskirts of Nashik was found to be manufacturing psychotropic drugs under the guise of running a pharmaceutical factory, an operation that police think is being replicated in many other places.
“Bhushan was the one handling the everyday running of the factory and was directly in touch with the distribution network. We also have evidence of him paying the rent of the factory from his personal account. We hope to get a trail of the hawala money that we have strong belief was used to run the operation,” said a senior policeman.
Most of the money spent by Lalit during his six-month hospital stay was in cash, which is what makes the police believe it was routed through hawala accounts.
In a dairy found at the homes of one of the 18 people arrested in the case, the police found a list of several drug distributors who supplied mephedrone produced in the Patil brothers’ factory to peddlers in the city. Through the list, they have also been able to trace the supply network of the gang within the city, which they said has a huge web in South Mumbai.
Talking of Lalit’s escape from Sassoon hospital, the official said that he went to Nashik by a state transport bus after brazenly walking out of the hospital on October 2. “He had left behind all his phones and belongings in the hospital which the Pune police later seized. He went to Nashik where he met co-accused Sachin Wagh. It was in Wagh’s SUV that they were moving all around the state, went to Gujarat from where they hired a driver and proceeded towards Bengaluru,” said the officer.
On the way, the two ensured to use the phone sparingly. They would only use public Wi-fi to make calls over the internet from Wagh’s phone.
The officers who have interacted with Lalit said he was an ambitious guy. He even expressed the wish for his life to be immortalised on the celluloid during one of his interrogation sessions. He used to own an import-export firm in the past but the idea of earning a quick buck brought him to this business, they said.
According to the Pune police, Lalit is the mastermind behind running the ₹300 crore mephedrone drug empire which was exposed by the Pimpri-Chinchwad police in 2020. He was arrested by the Mumbai Police from Chennai on October 17.
Lalit was lodged at Yerawada Central Jail after his arrest in connection with the Chakan mephedrone seizure and later admitted to the Sassoon hospital. He has been charged for suppling mephedrone worth ₹2.14 crore to his aide Subhash Mandal through a hospital canteen staffer on September 30 while he was admitted in the hospital.
