Lalit Patil, a drug case accused who had escaped from a government hospital in Pune on October 2 has been arrested near Bengaluru, the city police said on Wednesday.
Patil (37), wanted in a Rs 300-crore mephedrone seizure case among others, was nabbed from a hotel on Tuesday night by a team of Sakinaka police station in Mumbai, a senior official said.
He was on Wednesday produced before a magistrate in suburban Andheri which remanded him in police custody till October 23 in the same mephedrone seizure case.
Talking to Marathi news channel ABP Majha in Mumbai while being taken for a medical check-up, Patil claimed that he had not run away from Pune's Sassoon General Hospital.
"I was made to run....I will tell who all were involved," he said while being escorted out by the police.
As per the Pune police, Patil escaped from the government-run hospital on October 2 when he was taken for X-ray imaging.
Arrested in 2022 in a drug case at Chakan in Pune district, he was lodged in Pune's Yerawada prison, and admitted to the Sassoon Hospital for the last three months.
The Sakinaka police in Mumbai had on October 6 said that they had seized 151 kg of mephedrone worth Rs 300 crore and arrested several persons from different cities during an operation that lasted two months. A drug manufacturing unit located in Nashik district was also busted during the probe.
Patil is the 15th person to be arrested in this case, the police said.
Seeking his custody, police told the magistrate's court that other accused arrested in the case had named him, and the police were also probing the money trail.
"With Lalit Patil's arrest, a big nexus will be unearthed. I have been briefed on the case, and I cannot divulge all the things, but I can say one thing, a big nexus will be unearthed, and those who are talking (making allegations) will be silenced," Maharashtra deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who also handles the home portfolio, told reporters in Pune.
Asked about his shocking escape from the hospital, Fadnavis said, "No one will be spared. Inquiry is going on."
The police had been left red-faced after Patil's escape on October 2. Nine police personnel were suspended for lapses in duty subsequently.
Earlier on September 30, Pune police had arrested a man from outside the Sassoon hospital and seized mephedrone worth Rs 2 crore from him. Probe led to the arrest of a hospital canteen employee who claimed that the drugs were supplied by Lalit Patil, who was admitted in the hospital. Patil, however, escaped three days later.
On October 10, the Pune police arrested his brother Bhushan and his associate Abhishek Balkawade from the Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh in connection with the mephedrone seizure outside the hospital.
The Maharashtra government also set up a four-member committee to conduct an inquiry into Lalit Patil's escape.
Talking about the Rs 300 crore mephedrone seizure probed by Sakinaka police, joint commissioner of police (law and order) Satyanarayan Choudhary told reporters in Mumbai that the probe began with a seizure of 10 grams of mephedrone in August, and led to a total haul of 151 kg.
"Lalit Patil is one of the main accused in the case and his brother Bhushan Patil is also an accused in this case," he said, adding that police had obtained a warrant against Bhushan and would get his custody from Pune Police.
As per the police, after escaping from the hospital, Lalit Patil, who hails from Nashik, first went to Chalisgaon in north Maharashtra's Jalgaon district and then reached Surat in Gujarat via Dhule.
After visiting a relative in Gujarat, he turned around and headed to Solapur in south Maharashtra and then continued on to Bijapur and Bengaluru, said an official.
The police were chasing him based on human intelligence and technical data, said deputy commissioner of police Datta Nalawade who headed the operation.
The Sakinaka police team finally caught up with him at a hotel at Chenna Sendra village in Bengaluru, Nalawade said.
Patil used rented cars and kept changing them from time to time, the DCP said.
As he did not carry a mobile phone, it was not possible for the police to track him from mobile data. Police questioned more than 70 persons while on Patil's trail, the official said.
The drug cartel busted by Sakinaka police was active since 2020, Nalawade said, adding that the first case was registered against Patil and his brother in 2020.
