Rem racket: 2 nurses from Ytl & Ngp held

Yavatmal: With the arrest of two nurses — one from Yavatmal GMCH and another working with a private hospital in Nagpur — in connection with black marketing of anti-viral drug Remdesivir, the number of arrests in the case has gone up to six.
Meanwhile, all the accused were produced before a court on Monday which granted bail to two women accused and remanded other four in police custody for three days.
The local crime branch sleuths had arrested Dr Akshay Thundalwar, Savan Pawar and Saurabh Mogarkar (all residents of Kalamb) and Bilkisbano Ansari (75), a resident of Yavatmal, on Saturday. Based on the information revealed by the accused, police had picked up one Poonam Meshram, an auxiliary nurse midwife at Yavatmal GMCH Covid Care Centre and her friend and Bilkisbano’s daughter Shabana Ansari, a nurse with a private hospital in Nagpur.
The court granted bail to Bilkisbano, who is diabetic, and also to Shabana, who is five-month pregnant.
According to sources, police have recovered 9 vials of Remdesivir from the accused. During investigations, it came to fore that the injections were siphoned off from the allotted quota of Yavatmal GMCH.
Police claimed that Poonam had supplied the Remdesivir injections to Bilkisbano.
Sources said Mogarkar was working with Poonam in the GMCH’s Covid Care Centre and later he joined the Kalamb CCC as male nurse. He allegedly roped in Dr Thundalwar and medical shop owner Pawar in the black marketing of the drug.
It is also learnt that Dr Thundalwar was earlier arrested by the police in 2016 in connection with death of a girl during an illegal medical termination of pregnancy.
Police inspector Gajanan Karewad of LCB is investigating the case.