Medical store burgled of vaccines worth Rs 10L

Refused Rs 10,000 for wife’s treatment by owner, accused plans theft

Mangesh Pote, alias Raju, an employee working with Apeksha Lifesciences —a wholesale medical store — was arrested by Hadapsar police on Thursday night for stealing vaccines worth Rs10.19 lakh on Tuesday night. Cops said 28-year-old Raju’s wife was suffering from undisclosed health issues and that he demanded Rs10,000 from the store owner Apekshit Navandar for her treatment. When the latter refused, an enraged Raju decided to take revenge and planned the burglary.

Sub-inspector Mangesh Bhange, who is investigating the case, informed that Raju was arrested on Thursday night and produced in court on Friday. There, he was remanded in police custody till June 4.

Navandar, who stays near the industrial estate at Hadapsar, told Mirror, “I was returning from Khamgaon to Pune when I received a call from the security guard Ghanashyam Sherbahadur, who informed me that the window of my shop was broken. I rushed to the shop and verified the stock of medicines. A box, containing costly vaccines, was missing. The security guard claimed that he had seen a suspicious man roaming near the shop that night. The suspect’s features resembled that of Raju, who lives in Sadashiv Peth and worked as a delivery boy at my shop. I immediately lodged a complaint with Hadapsar police.”

Investigating officer Bhange informed Mirror, “During the investigation, we questioned every employee of the shop. While going through the call records of the employees, we got to know that Raju had deleted the entire call history from his phone. The burglar had also stolen memory cards of three closed circuit cameras installed at the store. When we went through the CCTV footage of cameras placed on the streets, we found that Raju was suspiciously roaming around the shop. During sustained interrogation, Raju spilled the beans.”

“Injections and vaccines worth Rs 2.24 lakh have been recovered from the accused. Further probe is underway to ascertain whether others were involved,” Bhange added.