Rajkot civil hospital: Nurse held for ‘stealing’ Remdesivir

The accused, Himmat Chavda, had joined the Covid hospital in the Rajkot civil hospital as a male nurse through an outsourcing agency. (File)

THE DETECTION of Crime Branch (DCB) arrested a male nurse on Wednesday for allegedly stealing five vials of Remdesivir injection from the dedicated Covid-19 hospital set up on the campus of state government-run Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay (PDU) Hospital in Rajkot.

The accused, Himmat Chavda, had joined the Covid hospital in the Rajkot civil hospital as a male nurse through an outsourcing agency.

The DCB had arrested Devyani Chavda (20), a nurse working in Shanti Covid Hospital on Gondal Road of the city, and her fiance Vishal Gohel (21) on September 27 after they were found in possession of two vials of Remdesivir injection, which they had offered to sell to a decoy for Rs 10,000 each. During questioning, Devyani had told police that she had procured the injections from one Ankit Rathod who works in the medical store of Jalaram Hospital for Rs 15,000. Rathod had reportedly told police that he had purchased the injections from his colleague Jagdish Sheth. The latter, in turn, said that he had purchased the injections for Rs 12,000 from Himmat Chavda, who used to work as a nurse in Jalaram Hospital in the past.

“Himmat Chavda has confessed that he had stolen the injections while serving in Wing-A on the fourth floor of the hospital. He said that being a member of nursing staff, he wrote proscriptions for more injections than actually required for patients, got such prescriptions approved by administrator of the ward and then took the additional injections home. In turn, he sold them to Sheth with whom he had come into contact while serving in Jalaram Hospital,” Assistant Commissioner of Police (Crime), Dadubha Basiya said.

Basiya added that Himmat had committed the alleged theft thrice over the past two weeks and sold the injections, which are used in treating Covid-19 patients, to Sheth. All the five accused have been remanded in police custody till Thursday.

Meanwhile, Police Commissioner Manoj Agarwal said that he will write to the civil hospital and if anyone else is found to be involved in the racket, action would be initiated against them. “We are going to write to the administration of the civil hospital over this. If anyone else is involved, we will take action,” said Agarwal.

The DCB had also busted a racket of bogus billing of Remdesivir injections and had arrested Sachin Patel, owner of Theos Pharmacy store, and Parsottam Faldu, a medial representative of Zyduc Cadila for Saurasthra zone. Police said that Sachin allegedly forged bills to create false record that that he had sold 110 vials of Remdesivir injection to Vedant Hospital in the city. However, Vedant Hospital told police that it had not ordered the injections from that pharmacy. Police are investigating sale of 96 vials to Shubham Hospital by the same pharmacy store. The duo were also sent to police custody till Thursday.

The DCB had on Tuesday arrested Dr Deepak Gadhiya, a homeopath who runs Shubham Clinic, for allegedly treating Covid-19 patients despite not having been authorised to do so and administering Remdesivir injection to patients by charging them Rs 7,000 per injection. A local court on Wednesday sent Gadhiya to police custody for a day.

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