Ranchi police arrested two persons from a city-based hotel on Tuesday evening when they were fixing a deal of selling six Remdesivir injections at Rs.72,000 each.
The police acted on a tip off and conducted a raid at Raso Inn under the limits of Jagganathpur Police Station and nabbed the duo.
Senior Superintendent of Police S.K. Jha said that the duo pleaded innocence claiming that they were reselling the injection, which they bought in the black market, after a needy patient they knew of was provided the injection from a government hospital.
“The matter is under investigation. An FIR has been lodged under the provisions of Drug Control Act,” said Jha.
There is an acute crisis of Remdesivir injections in the state. Health Minister Banna Gupta claimed last week that the state was in need of at least 4000 Remdesivir injections daily, but received only 20,000 in the past 10 days, thereby being able to meet only 50 per cent of the demand.
Several rumours regarding black marketing of Remdesivir injections across the cities in India have been doing the rounds since the spike in Covid cases. The anti-viral injection, doctors say, is crucial in treatment of asymptomatic Covid patients.
The police, however, did not disclose the identity of the two men held on Tuesday. Sources said that one of them is a resident of Over Bridge locality on MG Road in Ranchi. The cops also recovered a car, a bike, six Remdesivir injections from the duo and said that the deal for the six injections was fixed at Rs.4.32 lakh.
While there were rumours that the injections were originally from Bangladesh, Jha said that the police were yet to ascertain from where the injections were procured.
The Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand government had earlier sought the Centre’s nod in procuring 50,000 vials of Remdesivir from Bangladesh for 1 million dollars. The CM, in a letter to the Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers DV Sadananda Gowda, stated that Jharkhand received only 8038 vials of Remdesivir from the Centre against its demand of 76,640 vials.
Health Minister Banna Gupta said last week that the state had to procure additional 2000 Remdesivir injections from Assam as the Centre failed to meet the requirements of the drug in Jharkhand.
