Remdesivir smuggling racket probe ambit widens to Delhi and Kolkata

Gurgaon: Police on Wednesday arrested a pharmacist for illegally supplying Remdesivir, used for treating Covid-19 patients, to five foreign nationals accused of running international drug smuggling rackets out of two residences in the city.
The ambit of the probe into the drug ring also widened. Some pharmacists and suppliers of medicines in Delhi-NCR are under the scanner, as most of the recovered drugs were procured from either Gurgaon or its neighbouring cities. However, some of the injections, often used as narcotics, came from as far as Kolkata. Police are now probing how those drugs were transported during the lockdown.
“Medicines come under essential items and there was no restriction on their transportation. A pharmacist might have helped them bring the medicines to Gurgaon,” said an officer who is part of the investigation. Four Iraqi men – all of them working as translators for patients travelling to India – and a woman from Uzbekistan had been caught with large quantities of drugs, worth Rs 45 lakh, on Tuesday after a 12-hour operation. On Wednesday, police continued crackdown with raids at several chemist stores. Pradeep Kumar, a pharmacist who runs Medigreen Pharmacy in front of Medanta Hospital, was found in possession of Remdesivir. The drug can only be supplied to hospitals designated as Covid treatment centres and can’t be sold in the open market.
Amandeep Chauhan, drug control officer, Gurgaon, said Kumar used to buy Remdesivir at Rs 15,000 per vial in the black market, sell it to Mohnaad, one of the arrested Iraqi nationals, for Rs 18,000 per vial, who would later dispatch it to Iraq, where the drug would be sold for Rs 1 lakh (in Indian currency) per vial. The MRP of the drug is Rs 5,400. “The team recovered 84 vials of Remdesivir that Kumar had hidden in a room on a farm in his village, approximately 30km from Gurgaon. The inventory was also to be sold to Mohnaad,” said Chauhan. Kumar, police added, had supplied the accused with other drugs too without any prescription. He was booked under sections of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 at Sadar police station.
“We are trying to find out how the pharmacist managed to get hold of the medicine, how long has he been supplying them illegally, and who else has procured this medicine from him,” ACP (Sadar) Aman Yadav said, adding that police are tracking others and more arrests are likely in the coming days.
DSP (CID) Inderjeet Yadav said that during initial interrogation, Kumar had shared the names of a few people in the pharma business. “We are verifying them and appropriate action will be taken against all those involved,” he said. Records of purchase, sale and stocks of medicines of some pharmacists are being checked to find out if any drug was sold illegally. “The teams of police and the CM’s flying squad, along with drug enforcement officials, are making all efforts to nab people in the chain who are involved in black-marketing medicines essential for Covid-19 treatment,” said Chauhan.
Meanwhile, some translators TOI spoke with said while the accused had been in touch with them, they were not aware about the illegal sale of drugs. “Several patients from Iraq come to India for treatment and therefore, Indian medicines are in demand there. They were in touch with some medical stores in Iraq known for supplying Indian medicines,” a translator who is attached to a hospital said, not wishing to be named. He added that most patients take some additional medicines while returning to Iraq, but the quantities are very small.