Cops bust fake Remdesivir factory in U'khand, 7 held
New Delhi: Seven people, who were running a fake Remdesivir injection manufacturing unit, were arrested from Kothdwar in Uttarakhand. In another case, five people, including a doctor, were arrested from Malviya Nagar area for preparing Covid reports.
In the first case, police arrested Mohammad Shoiab Khan, Mohan Kumar Jha, Manish Goyal, Pushkar Chanderkant Pakhale, Sadhna Sharma, Vatan Kumar Saini and Aditya Gautam. "The gang consist of accountant-turned-pharmacy owner, pharmacist, interior designer, mask and gloves suppliers, medical aid dealer and ayurveda medicine trader," official said.
Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava said working on useful information, police arrested the culprits after a prolonged investigation and unearthed a 'pharmaceutical' unit at Kothdwar, Uttarakhand manufacturing large quantities of fake Remdevisir injections (COVIPRI), selling at over Rs 25,000.
"In all, 196 ready to sell fake Remdesivir injections were seized. From the premises, packing machines, 3,000 empty vials for packing Ramdesivir were recovered. Accused further disclosed that he already sold 2,000 fake Remdesivir injections to desperate people," he said.
These arrests were made by a team formed under supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Shibesh Singh.Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Monika Bharadwaj said during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the demand of Remdesivir injections and other life-saving drugs have soared high and these drugs are short in supply.
"The accused persons encashed the situation and started to prepare the fake Remdesivir with antibiotic injection vials by changing their labels with COVIPRI to sell them as Remdesivir," he said. As per official, they used to sell these injections in black market on higher prices and earn huge profit. They have setup a network of people who supply the injections on demand.
Several teams of Crime Branch were conducting raids in various parts of Uttarakhand to unearth further chain involved in supplying, black marketing of fake life-saving drugs. The alleged company Nector Herbs and Drugs company at Kotdwar, Uttarakhand was being sealed.
In another case, five people including a doctor, have been arrested for making forged COVID-19 test reports in Malviya Nagar.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Atul Kumar Thakur said the complainant Vipul Saini, a resident of Khirki Village, he along with 45 of his relatives gave samples for COVID-19 testing to Himanshu and Pragyanand.
On Sunday, Rishab Shukla, a friend of Saini, also gave his sample for testing to the accused duo. The test reports stated that Shukla was COVID-19 positive but he did not have any symptoms.
On Wednesday, he gave his sample to another laboratory where he tested negative for the infection, police said. On Thursday, Saini along with Himanshu and Pragyanand went to the Genestrings Lab and found that the report of Shukla was not in the records of the laboratory, police said.
One of the accused, Himanshu informed police he along with his cousin Pragyanand, used to collect home samples and give them to Manish, working in Genestrings Lab, without making any entry in the records of the laboratory, the officer said.
Manish used to share the results with Pragyanand through excel sheets and then Pragyanand would print the results on the fake letter head of Genestrings Lab, police said.
Delhi Police on Friday also arrested two people, including a hospital employee, for stealing eight Ramdesivir injections from a hospital in Dwarka.
As per the official, the woman was presently employed in Mata Roop Rani Maggo Hospital at Uttam Nagar, and recovered injections were procured by her from the hospital to earn easy money. Further, she disclosed that the other accused, Naveen was also previously an employee in the same hospital. Both hatched conspiracy.
