BENGALURU: In a major Remdesivir racket in the Divisional Railway Hospital, the staff stole over 70 vials of the lifesaving drugs and sold them in black.
Three male employees attached to the hospital in Bengaluru and an ambulance driver have been arrested.
The racket was unearthed by the Railway administration this weekend when they decided to carry out a preventive exercise along with the Railway Protection Force (RPF) suspecting shortages in the hospital.
A top railway official said, “RPF personnel were roped in to conduct a decoy operation wherein potential buyers were sent in front of the hospital to scout for Remdesivir. On Saturday (May 16), the hospital ambulance driver, hired on contract basis, offered to sell two vials, each having 100 mg of the medicine, by pricing them at Rs 50,000 each, to one of the buyers. His accomplice, a ward boy, offered to provide another three vials. They were caught redhanded.”
On probing them further, they revealed the involvement of another attender and a male nurse in the racket. They had been doing this since April. “We suspect them to have taken over 70 vials,” another official said. The packaging on the medicine reveals that they all belonged to consignments ordered only for the hospital.
By withholding medicines intended for the patient and selling it off, these individuals have endangered lives of railway employees and their families, the official added.
The medicine is given free of cost in railway hospital but is presently charged between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,800 per 100 gm vial in private hospitals depending on the brand.
Giving details about the course, Dr Venkateshaiah, Medical Superintendent of the KC General Hospital, “A course of six vials of Remdesivir is generally prescribed for a Covid patieent in a serious condition and it needs to be administered as two doses on the first day and one each on consecutive four days.”
Cases have been booked by the RPF against the four under Section (3) of the Railway Protection Force Act which deals with unlawful possession of any railway property stolen or unlawfully obtained.