On Thursday, two doctors from private hospitals along with three others were arrested by the Madhya Pradesh police special task force (STF) for black marketing the most important anti-viral drug Remdesivir.

Remdesivir injection is widely being used in treating COVID-19 patients and its demand and price has skyrocketed due to a massive surge in coronavirus cases across the country. STF (Jabalpur) Superintendent of Police Neeraj Soni said that two doctors along with three other people were arrested for black marketing of Remdesivir. The arrested doctors were identified as Jitendra Singh Thakur (26 years), who works with Life Medicity Hospital, and Neeraj Sahu (26 years), who was employed with Ashish Hospital.

The three accused persons were identified as Sudhir Soni (27 years), Rahul Vishwakarma (24 years) and Rakesh Malviya (31 years), working in Sanskardhani Hospital, said the police officer. He further said that 4 Remdesivir vials along with 6 mobile phones and a 4-wheeler with Rs 10,400 in cash were recovered from these accused persons.

Thakur, via the other accused persons, was selling Remdesivir injections in the black market. These injections were left by patients who had recovered from the infection. Thakur used to give these unused injections to Sahu. Sahu used to then pass them to Vishwakarma who again used to give the vials to the other two accused persons for selling in the black market.

This racket came into light when a policeman was being sent as a decoy buyer to purchase the injections from Sudhir Soni and Vishwakarma. All the accused people were booked under IPC sections 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 420 (cheating), 34 (common intention) and applicable provisions of the Essential Commodities Act and the Epidemic Diseases Act.

Source: The New Indian Express