Police nab 10 for black marketing Remdesivir in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: Black marketing of Remdesivir, used in treating Covid, is more rampant than it appears.The city police and Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths conducted searches in several places on Thursday and arrested 10 people, who were selling each Remdesivir injections for Rs 20,000.Twelve injections were recovered from four fraudsters in one instance as others ran away after the raid started.

In the north division, six people, including a lecturer of a private nursing college and staff of private hospitals, were arrested for selling the drug in the black. Based on a tipoff that two men were selling the injection in public, a team from Subramanyanagar police arrived at the spot near a private hospital in Rajajinagar and caught Dinesh M, 27, who works as a lecturer at a nursing college, and his associate Shankar, 42, a lab technician from a private diagnostic centre at Nagarabhavi. The police recovered 12 Remdesivir injections, a motorbike, two mobile phones and cash of Rs 7,500 from them. 

The accused told the police that they sourced the drug from Anand Kumar, who is a lab technician at a hospital, and shared the profits with him. The police found out that they were also getting the injections from another lab technician from a private hospital, Chethan, and a boys’ hostel mess in-charge of a nursing college, Pawan. Chethan and Pawan are now on the run.

The fraudsters had created accounts in social networking sites to sell Remdesivir. They demanded Rs 25,000 per injection, but settled for Rs 20,000.Based on the information given by the accused, the police arrested Johny H (34), HR manager of a private hospital, and recovered three Remdesivir vials, a car, two mobile phones and Rs 5,000 cash from him. He was on his way to meet family members of a Covid patient to sell the vials when he was arrested, the police said.

In separate raids, JC Nagar police arrested three men -- Janardhan NS (34), a medical representative, Deepak (34), a delivery boy of a medical store, and Lokesh (28), a receptionist at a private hospital. The police recovered 10 injections of Remdesivir, three motorbikes, seven mobile phones and Rs 16,000 cash from them.All the accused have been taken into custody for further interrogation, Dharmendra Kumar Meena, DCP (North), said.