Baby Patankar drug case: 4 years on, accused cop looks for closure, regaining some dignity

In conversations over the last two years, Gokhale has sounded increasingly confident of being proven innocent and regaining some of his dignity.

Gokhale, who was posted in the Azad Maidan unit of the Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC), and Inspector Gautam Gaikwad of the Nashik rural police were arrested on the eve of their retirement in May 2015. On the day that they were to bid farewell to the force, they stood in the accused box in court alongside sub-inspector Sudhakar Sarang, assistant sub-inspector Jyotiram Mane and head constable Yeshwant Parate.

“It has always been clear that there was no evidence against us. Baby was an informant and we were only doing our jobs in contacting her. These four years have been extremely difficult for us. Not only have we been made to suffer economically and physically, but the police department has also been labelled as accused,” he said.

Son Saket recalled how carefully his father ironed his uniform one last time the previous evening before a phone call to come down to the police headquarters to answer some questions.

“I am determined to know why my father was framed and humiliated. I have some idea and will not rest until I have answers,” said Saket, a social activist who has been a consultant to the Congress. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, he accused the state BJP government of framing his father. Saket also praised his father as an “honest cop” and “a gentleman”.

Gokhale served his first stint in ANC in the mid-90s when seizures heroin and ephedrine were routine. In his second stint beginning 2014, this time as the head of a unit overseeing south Mumbai, Gokhale led a campaign to weed out the synthetic drug mephedrone. When he wasn’t speaking to community leaders and planning busts, Gokhale met parents of young addicts and persuaded them to seek drug rehabilitation. His expertise was also sought in drafting a situation report for the city, which was submitted to the Centre in the months before mephedrone was included in the schedule of controlled substances under the NDPS Act, and banned.

Saket said that the Mumbai Police has not done any favours to his father by deciding to exonerate him. “This time isn’t going to come back,” he said. Understandably, the decision has brought little relief to an officer who was denied his pension and promotion benefits and forced to move to Nashik after renting an apartment in Mumbai without a steady income proved impossible.

“There is nothing more pitiful than arresting a partially paralysed man,” Saket said. Gokhale served the last 14 years of his career with the aid of a walking stick after an accident paralysed the left side of his body.

It was not the sort of end he had envisioned to a career in law enforcement that began with a pledge taken at the funeral pyre of his murdered brother Nandkumar Gokhale. The older sibling was a sub-inspector killed in Kamathipura while attempting to control a communally sensitive situation in the early 90s. “His martyrdom was a guiding force during all those 30 years of policing, little did I know at the end of my career, I was in for an equally brutal shock,” Gokhale had written on Facebook on June 28, 2015, soon after being released on bail.

Now that he is inching towards being proved innocent, Gokhale has been vague on what recourse he plans to take to make good on his four last years. But on Facebook earlier this week, he announced the end of his two-year-long series of posts educating readers about drug laws and warning them of the ill-effects of substance abuse.

Writing that the daily sale of drugs outstrips police seizure, Gokhale added, “Be safe, be careful, take care of yourself and your children. I am available 24/7 if you need me.”