Mumbai: Mahesh Khemlani, a key accused in the suspected fatal drug overdose case who flew abroad after the incident last month, was arrested early Friday after his arrival in the city, taking the total number of arrests in the case to 12.
A 28-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman, part of a group of 25 MBA students attending a music concert in Goregaon (East) on April 11, consumed ecstasy pills and died a day later. Police claimed that Khemlani had allegedly supplied drugs to the other accused in the case and had instructed them to transfer sale proceeds to the bank account of his live-in partner Jiya Jacob.
Earlier, police had arrested MBA students Raunak Khandelwal and Pratik Pandey; event organiser Vihan Samal; concert venue employees Sunny Jain and Balakrishnan Kurup; alleged drug suppliers Anand Patel, Vineet Gerelani and Ayush Sahitya; Shubh Agarwal who allegedly delivered the drugs; and Jacob.
Vanrai police said they had issued a lookout notice for Khemlani and took assistance of immigration authorities to arrest him. Khemlani was later produced before a Borivli magistrate's court, which remanded him to police custody till May 6.
Police alleged that transactions of Rs 40-50 lakh have taken place in Jacob's bank account, which was also operated by Khemlani. In their submission to court, police said they want to quiz him about the source of this wealth and the source of the drugs he allegedly supplied. Police also said that Khemlani lives in Hong Kong most of the time and they want to probe whether he brought drugs to India from other countries and whether there was an international drug syndicate in operation.
However, Khemlani's lawyer Pankaj Jadhav told the court that his client had not made a single monetary transaction or a single phone call with any of the other accused and had, in fact, appeared before Vanrai police on his own accord to cooperate with the investigation. Jadhav also said that Jacob's bank account was not a joint account.
