Gurgaon: A
gang involved in selling
Remdesivir injections off the counter at almost six times the price was
busted in Gurgaon with the arrest of three persons on Saturday. The emergency
Covid medicine is believed to have been smuggled out of a government hospital.
The veil was lifted off the drug
racket days after the Gurgaon health department learnt that several Covid patients in home isolation were using Remdesivir after getting it prescribed by doctors they knew. Advised only for critical Covid patients, Remdesivir is not supposed to be sold off the counter and is only supplied to dedicated Covid hospitals.
Amandeep Chouhan, the
drug control officer of the district, said they tracked down the gang after getting an anonymous mail. “The complainant alleged that Remdesivir was being sold in the black market. He also provided a phone number of a person who could supply the drug,” Chouhan said.
A call was made to the number and the person on the other side said he could provide Remdesivir for Rs 25,000 a vial. Sharad Mehrotra, president of the druggist and chemist association, agreed to be a decoy customer. “They asked us to come to Ardee City. As soon as he gave the vial, he was caught. He said his name was Jitender,” said Chouhan.
Jitender spilled the beans on two other suppliers — Rajkumar and Kamal Kishore Singh. They, too, were apprehended after being called to Ardee City. Sources said Jitender would get the vials from Rajkumar, who would get them from Singh. Police are trying to trace the supply chain.
According to Chouhan, the vial that Jitender had come with was Cipremi-Remdesivir and had the batch number L610092. Although the vial had an MRP of Rs 4,000, Jitender was selling it for Rs 25,000. Its date of manufacturing was March 22, 2021, and was supposed to expire in September this year.
The official said the vial had the words “N.RLY supply not for sale” written on the sticker, which suggests it was meant to be supplied to a government facility.
Police said they would probe if a drug smuggling racket was at work in Covid hospitals in the city. All three have been accused of violating the Drugs Price Control Order, 2013, and provisions of the Essential Commodities Act. The police were in the process of registering an FIR at the time of filing this story late on Saturday evening.
This is not the first time that a drug racket has been busted in the city. In September last year, two international drug smuggling rackets, both linked to each other and operating from residential houses in Gurgaon, were busted by the state CID. More than 60 different kinds of medicine used for the treatment of Covid, cancer, depression, epilepsy and other diseases were recovered.
Five foreign nationals — 4 from Iraq and a woman from Uzbekistan — were arrested.