Ahmedabad: Even while corona patients have been running from pillar to post to get the life-saving Remdesivir injections, unscrupulous greedy crooks have been raking in money by selling the injection on the black market in several cities of Gujarat.
More than 9 cases of black marketing of Remdesivir registered in Ahmedabad
The police had arrested ten persons on April 29 in two different cases of black marketing of Remdesivir in Ahmedabad. From one of them, who was employed in a pharma company, the police recovered a stock of original and fake Remdesivir injections. The police recovered Rs 21 lakhs in cash and 5,000 vials of fake Remedisivir injections from them.
On May 1, the city crime branch police recovered from a house in the Juhapura area 1,170 vials of Remdesivir and Rs 17,00,000 cash. Two persons were arrested. Their interrogation revealed that they used to get fake Remdesivir, which was a mixture of glucose and saline water, from Surat and sold it to the needy at Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,500 per vial. They had sold 5,000 vials of the fake injections and were in the process of selling 60,000 more vials.
The police, by interrogating the racketeers, also seized a factory in Surat where these fake Remdesivir injections were being made.
State home minister Pradipsinh Jadeja said as many as 23 such cases of fake Remdesivir had come to light in Gujarat. These included 9 cases in Ahmedabad, three each in Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot, and one each in Mehsana, Valsad, Dahod, Patan and Bharuch. On May 2, the police arrested one person from Chandlodia in Ahmedabad in possession of 58 vials of Remdesivir he had brought from Hyderabad to sell on the black market.
Also read: Gujarat factory manufacturing fake Remdesivir busted; six held
Five arrested from Vadodara for selling 5 Remdesivir in black market
The Vadodara crime branch police busted a racket of black marketing of Remdesivir with the arrest of five persons. The accused were selling the injections at anything between Rs 16,000 and Rs 20,000. Police recovered from them Rs 2,00,000 cash, 90 vials of injections worth Rs 7.61 lakh. Their interrogation revealed that they had already sold 300 to 400 vials of Remdesivir. One of the accused was working in the medical store of Shroff hospital while another operated a medical agency.
A black marketeer doctor nabbed from Palanpur
Banaskantha district too was experiencing a shortage of Remdesivir injections. Here too the police came across a racket of selling the injections on the black market. District health officer had raided the Bhuma ICU medicare hospital and found that the hospital had obtained Remdesivir injections in the name of corona patients who had already been discharged. Six vials of the injection were recovered from the doctor of the hospital and a case against him was registered under the Disaster Management and epidemic acts.
Remdesivir was being sold in Surat at Rs 12,000
Surat too has not lagged behind in the Remdesivir black marketing scam. The Surat police busted the racket by posing as a decoy buyer of the injection who was quoted Rs 70,000 for six vials. The police decoy was taken by accused Kalpesh to Fusion pathological laboratory owned by accused Pradip Katariya where the police caught both Kalpesh and Pradip while they were handing over six vials. Their interrogation revealed that they used to obtain the injection from the civil hospital producing copies of the Aadhar card of corona positive patients admitted in Nitya hospital. The police have arrested five persons in this connection.
Also read: Guj court asks 2 doctors held for Remdesivir sale to serve Covid patients
Two cases of black marketing of Remdesivir in Bharuch
The police, who had kept a watch in the Ankleshwar GIDC area, nabbed two youth for selling Remesivir at Rs 17,000. Their interrogation revealed that a doctor from Netrang used to supply them the injections which they were selling to needy persons at Rs 15,000 to Rs 17,000.
After this, on May 4, the police arrested a nurse and an employee of a medical store of City Care hospital on Dahej bypass road. The nurse used to supply the injections to the Sheth Medical store to be sold on the black market. The police have arrested them both and recovered six vials of injections valued at Rs 54,000.
