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The Pune City police on Tuesday took custody of drug cartel kingpin Lalit Anil Patil (34), who was allegedly found operating a mephedrone racket from the prisoners’ ward of Sassoon Hospital.
After escaping from the Sassoon hospital on October 2, Patil was arrested by Mumbai police on October 17 from a village near Bangalore. A court had remanded Patil to the custody of Mumbai police for further investigation. After he was sent to judicial custody and was lodged in Arthur Road prison in Mumbai, the Pune city police initiated the procedure to take his custody from Mumbai jail to probe him in connection with the drug seizure case in Pune.
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Pune Police Commissioner Retesh Kumaarr confirmed that Pune police took custody of Patil on Tuesday night and that he would be produced before a court in Pune on Wednesday, where his further custody for investigation will be sought. The Pune police have also sought custody of two more alleged drug racketeers—Shivaji Shinde and Rahul Pandit alias Rohitkumar Chowdhary.
Shinde and Chowdhary were arrested along with Patil in the same drug racket case lodged at Sakinaka police station in Mumbai and they too were lodged in Arthur Road Prison in Mumbai. Patil was among the 22 people arrested in the Chakan mephedrone seizure of 2020 and was lodged in Yerawada jail. Probe revealed that Patil, while being admitted at ward number 16 of Sassoon hospital, allegedly supplied mephedrone worth Rs 2.14 crore to his aide Subhash Mandal through a hospital canteen staffer on September 30.
An FIR was lodged against Lalit, Mandal and the canteen staffer under NDPS Act. While a probe was on, Lalit escaped from the hospital on October 2. A separate offence was lodged against Lalit for escaping custody. He was arrested on October 17.
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