Seven held for Remdesivir black marketing, selling fakes in Jhansi

Done/ALVI
Jhansi: In a major breakthrough, police have arrested seven persons for selling real as well as fake Remdesivir injections in black on Saturday.
Presenting all the seven accused in front of the media, Jhansi SSP, Rohan P Kanay said, all the seven accused work as ward boys, nursing staff, supervisor or medical store workers.
Police have recovered nine vials of Remdesivir injections, of which two are original and rest are fake.The cops also recovered five sealed antigen corona rapid test kits, empty vials of used Remdesivir injection, distilled water, disposable syringes and Rs 2.30 lakh in cash.
The accused been identified as Jamuna Prasad (30), Manish Pal (28), Sachin Prajapati (22), Vishal Birthare (22), Himanshu Samadhiya (22), Harendra Patel (31) and Manvendra Patel (32), all from Jhansi.
Jamuna and Manish are staff nurses at Jhansi medical college while the rest work as nurse, compounder or supervisor in private nursing homes.
All of them have been booked under Sections 267, 270, 188, 34, 419, 420, 409 of IPC, section 63 of the CopyRight Act-1957, section 17A, 17B, 18A, 18C, 27 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act-1940, section 52/53 of the Disaster Management Act and section 3(1) of the Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance-2020.
Police officials said Jamuna confessed that he and Manish used to steal Remdesivir injections of those patients who they thought would die soon and sold them in the black market for Rs 30,000-40,000.
The other accused used to take used vials of Remdesivir injections from different hospitals and sold them to the needy people by filling them with sterile water which the victims used to buy in good faith after paying a hefty amount, police further said.
“Two different types of gangs were working, one who used to steal original vials from patients and sold them at premium while the others filled distilled water in empty used vilas and sold them to people,” the SSP said.
“The accused have been involved in this crime since the first wave. We are investigating the matter and trying to nab all those associated with them or other similar gangs. Since the crime is of serious nature, we will try to invoke NSA against them,” the SSP added.