A man who was a fugitive for more than nine years has been sentenced to 22 years in prison following a conviction of attempted first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child as a result of spiking his girlfriend’s smoothie with an abortion-inducing drug.
Manishkumar Patel, 45, a Wisconsin businessman, was sentenced Tuesday following his conviction in August.
Patel had been a fugitive since he was charged with homicide in 2007. As India West reported, his friends and family members collected $750,000 in bail for his release, but he fled the U.S. and was believed to be hiding in India until October 2016, when he reportedly travelled to Toronto, Canada.
Patel was ultimately captured in New York early in 2017 and extradited back to Outagamie County, Wisconsin. In May 2017, a judge held Patel on $50 million cash bail.
According to India West, Patel – who is married – began an affair with physician Darshana Patel in 2001. The couple had a son in 2004, and Darshana became pregnant again in 2006, but miscarried. In 2007, she again became pregnant. She informed police that she grew suspicious of her boyfriend when she observed him stirring a smoothie at a store and then offering the drink to her. She said she noticed a powdery substance on the rim of the cup and subsequently faked a stomach ache and did not drink the smoothie. Nevertheless, she suffered another miscarriage several weeks later.
Darshana said, however, that she sent the powdery substance off to a lab for analysis. The results reportedly showed it to be RU-486, or mifepristone, an abortifacient. She then filed a criminal complaint against Patel.
A police search of Patel’s home found an envelope containing RU-486 pills which he later told authorities he had obtained in India. Patel admitted giving his girlfriend one of the pills because he did not want to have more children.
At the time of his arrest in 2007, Patel reportedly owned 14 gas stations, a hotel, and other businesses in Wisconsin.
A similar case reached its conclusion in May of this year.
Sikander Imran, a doctor from Arlington, Virginia, received a 20-year sentence with all but three years suspended after pleading guilty to fetal homicide for slipping his pregnant girlfriend the abortifacient Misoprostol in her tea.
Imran lost his medical license as well and could be deported to Pakistan after serving his prison term.
The physician was arrested in May 2017 after his former girlfriend, Brooke Fiske – who was 17 weeks pregnant at the time – was rushed to Virginia Hospital Center with labor contractions.
When Fiske revealed she was pregnant with their child, Imran told her he wanted her to have an abortion, but she refused. When Fiske attempted to discuss the details of raising their child with Imran, he slipped Misoprostol into her tea, causing her to go into labor.
“When I was drinking my tea in the evening I got to the bottom of the cup. There was a gritty substance in there and when I looked at it, I could tell that it was a pill that had been ground up,” she said. “According to the nurse at the hospital it’s 200 milligrams to induce labor. So, he gave me 800.”
Fiske described the loss of her baby boy as heartbreaking and devastating, and testified against Imran in June 2017.
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