4 docs held for buying stolen medical equipment

Varanasi: Four medical practitioners landed in jail for involvement in the theft of advanced medical equipment of over Rs 20 lakh from a hospital to upgrade their establishments located in the city outskirts.
The four doctors took help of the nursing staff of a prominent hospital of the city to procure advanced BiPap, electrocardiography (ECG), arterial blood gas (ABG) analyser and infusions machines stolen from a city hospital.
All the five, including the hospital staffer, were arrested on Monday.
Deputy commissioner of police Kashi zone RS Gautam said, “On noticing many costly equipment from the intensive care unit of his hospital missing in past few days, the manager of one Ashirwad hospital in Mahmoorganj checked the CCTV footages after which he lodged a named FIR against a nursing staff Anand Kumar of Sevapuri in this connection. Taking note of the complaint, the Bhelupur police nabbed Kumar on Monday.”
"During investigation, Kumar confessed to his crime and divulged names of the four doctors — Shyam Narain Maurya of Shiva hospital Akhri by-pass, Ashish Kumar Singh of Om hospital Akhri Rohaniya, Shiv Kumar Yadav of Shrestha hospital Avalesh Rohaniya and Arun Kurmar Yadav of Medics Lifecare hospital Akhri -- who had purchased equipment stolen by him," said Gautam.
On raiding the establishments of these four doctors, the police recovered one BiPap, one ABG and one infusion machine from Shyam’s hospital, said the DCP. Two BiPap and five infusions were found at the hospital of Ashish, one ECG, two BiPap and five infusion machines were recovered from Shiv’s hospital and two BiPap and three infusion machines were found in the hospital of Arun, he added.
Police have seized 14 infusion machines with 10 cables, six BiPap, one ECG and one ABG machine. The cost of the recovered equipment has been estimated as over Rs 20 lakh and all four doctors have been arrested, added the DCP.
Kumar told the police that he worked at the ICU of the hospital in Mahmoorganj since 2021 and while working one Sujit Patel had come to his contact. Sujit introduced Ajay to Kumar after which other three doctors also came in his contact, he said. Kumar said that he needed money and to meet his requirements he finalised a deal with these four doctors to steal the machines for them.
After the four doctors agreed, Kumar started stealing machines one by one from his workplace and delivered it to the four doctors with the help of Sujit, said the police. The machines of several lakhs rupees were sold to these four doctors against payment of a few thousand rupees, said police adding efforts are on to arrest Sujit.