Pramesh S Jain
Officials of the Railway Protection Force on Tuesday busted major Remdesivir injection Vials black marketing racket and arrested four staff of the railway hospital for running the racket .
Senior RPF Official said,the RPF officials received a credible information about the Remdesivir injection vials being stolen by Bengaluru Railway Hospital staff and are selling it in illegally charging exorbitant price from patients relative.
Based on a tip off,a team of RPF officials approached one of the accused near railway hospital close to KSR station and caught him red handed while handing over three vials of Remdesivir injections .
The accused,an attender by profession,offered to sell three vials for a price of Rs.1.5 lakh.
based on his information the police arrested his associates including a staff nurse, ambulance driver and house keeping staff.
Inquiries revealed that the accused are in the business for the fortnight and sold around 70 vials charging exorbitant price of Rs.50,000 each.
A detailed investigation by the team it has revealed that the accused would take the vials from the store which are meant for patients .
Elaborating further the patient requires at least six doses of vials for complete recovery,but the accused would give him only three doses and keep the rest with them which they would sell it into black market.
The accused are selling the injections mostly in bulks to the medical representatives and efforts are on to track them down.
We suspect that there are insiders involved in this racket and efforts are on to track them down.
We have arrested 4 persons under Section 3 of Railway Property (Unlawful Possession Act, including one contractual worker and Group C/D employees working in Divisional Railway Hospital.
All the accused have been produced before the court and have been remanded to judicial custody.Further investigation is in progress. Further, the staff involved have been suspended and stringent disciplinary action has been initiated by the Railway administration against them.
Finally Debashmita Chattopadhyay Banerjee Senior Divisional Security Commissioner of Railways, appreciated their whole staff for busting the Major Racket and arresting the accused successfully and a suitable reward will be given to the team for their meticulous investigation he added.
