VIJAYAWADA: Nuzvid police on Monday arrested three persons for allegedly supplying rapid test kits without taking the requisite permission from the State government and seized 954 test kits from their possession. The accused were also illegally conducting tests in the town. Addressing a press conference, Nuzvid DSP B Srinivasulu said the accused were identified as Potluri Rajendra (42) of Hyderabad, Chint a Venkateswara Rao (42) of Tiruvuru and Mallela Sudheer Kumar (32) of Kothapeta.
He said that the trio formed a gang and were selling the testing kits at a pharmacy shop near Tiruvur bus stand, where the police caught them red-handed. When Nuzvid VRO Pilli Raja Babu was informed about this, he approached the police and filed a complaint. As per his complaint, the VRO informed the police about the kits being sold at Venkata Sai Durga Medical and Fancy Store by accused Venkateswara Rao. They immediately raided the shop based on the VRO’s information and caught the accused.
They also came to know that Rao illegally procured the rapid antigen kits from another dealer Rajendra. The DSP also said that they had violated GO 336 by conducting Covid tests without wearing a proper PPE, not uploading the patient data online— in short, cheating both the patients and the State government. During interrogation, the police said that his friend and another accused Mallela Sudheer Kumar, a private technician, went a step further— he was conducting tests on the people without any authorisation and, moreover, he had no qualification.
“Based on the VRO’s complaint, a case has been booked against the trio. Potluri Rajendra is a distributor of medical equipment at Kamini Diagnosis. We seized as many as 954 rapid test kits kept inside 38 boxes. This is a serious crime and we are collecting the data from the accused regarding the people who approached them for tests so far,” the DSP said.