The youths held on Sunday. (File picture)

Mumbai/Pune, March 5: All but nine of the 290 people held from a Pune drugs party yesterday morning — many of them scions of “prominent” families from various cities — were given bail today.

Mumbai’s top criminal lawyer Satish Mane-Shinde rushed to Pune this morning to appear for many of the accused and immediately secured bail for 10.

Of the rest, 271 were initially sent to 14 days’ judicial custody in Yerawada central jail before being granted bail in the evening. They will be released tomorrow.

The remaining nine — the alleged organisers of the trance party at a farmhouse near Sinhagad, 35 km from Pune city — have been remanded in police custody for four days.

Police said the detained youths were mostly students, call centre employees and IT professionals, many having travelled from Mumbai, Goa, Ahmedabad or Bangalore just to attend the Holi eve party.

Officers said some of the youths were from rich and influential families in Pune and elsewhere, and one — a student of Symbiosis Institute — was a well-known politician’s nephew. But they wouldn’t name anyone.

Mane-Shinde, who argued Sanjay Dutt’s case for probation before an anti-terror court after returning from Pune, accused the police of “high-handedness”.

“Everybody was rounded up as if they were drug carriers. Many of them had attended the party for the music and fun of it without any knowledge that there could be drugs sold there,” the lawyer said.

The police said medical tests had been carried out on every detainee, but the results would take a month to be known.

The nine sent to police remand include the farmhouse’s owner Ramdas Hagavane and alleged drug suppliers Dhruv Kaushal, 22, and Paramjit Singh Brar, 27 — all of them Pune residents. The rest of the group is made up by a German national who played DJ at the trance party and five others allegedly caught red-handed doing drugs.

The police said an Irishwoman, a drugs dealer identified only as “Shaina”, was to supply 1,500 bottles of a new drug, California Drops, at the party but didn’t turn up.

However, the undercover police who busted the party in the small hours of Sunday, did seize 150 bottles of California Drops, a glycerine-like liquid said to be inhaled off one’s palms. The drugs haul included 100 gm of hashish and 2.5 kg of ganja.

Forty-five four-wheelers, 29 two-wheelers, seven mobile phones, a dolby music console, 17 cheelams, cigarette packets, syringes, condoms and 15 cartons of beer completed the seizure list.

The drugs have been sent to a laboratory at Chatushringi, Pune city, for chemical analysis.The police suspect the involvement of Israeli and Russian drug peddlers. Officers said the information about the party and the invitations were sent through Isratrance.com, run by a group called Israeli Psychedelic Trans Experience.

The website provides information on trance music festivals and parties across the world.