Alleged Drug racket at Sassoon General Hospital: Accused vanishes from civil hospital, probe launched

Pune: The Maharashtra government has set up a four-member committee to conduct an inquiry into the escape of Lalit Patil, a drug case accused, from the Sassoon General Hospital here.

The committee will be headed by Dr Dilip Mhaisekar, director of the Directorate of Medical Education and Research.

Its other members will be Dr Sudhir Deshmukh, dean of the Government Medical College, Solapur; Dr Hemant Godbole, professor of Government Medical College in Nanded, and Dr Eknath Pawar, professor of Grant Medical College, Mumbai.

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The story began to unravel on September 30 when Pune city police detained a man outside the government-operated Sassoon Hospital with a seizure of mephedrone, a prohibited substance, valued at a staggering Rs 2 crore. This arrest subsequently led to another; a hospital canteen employee who revealed that the drugs were supplied by none other than Lalit Patil. At the time, Patil was an inmate at Yerwada Jail but was admitted to the hospital.

Patil, however, escaped from the hospital on October 2 when he was being taken for X-ray imaging, leading to the suspension of nine police personnel.

Probe indicated that Patil, arrested in a drug case last year, was running his drugs racket from the hospital.

On Tuesday, Pune police arrested Lalit Patil’s brother Bhushan Patil and his aide Abhishek Balkawade from the Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh in the mephedrone seizure case.