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4 held for illegally selling Covid drug
Further searches are being conducted in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi by crime branch teams to nab other members of the two gangs and make more recoveries, police said.
Cracking down on hoarding and black marketing Covid-related life-saving drugs, Delhi Police on Friday said it arrested four men belonging to two separate interstate gangs over the past three days and allegedly recovered 81 vials of remdesivir injection from them. Further searches are being conducted in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi by crime branch teams to nab other members of the two gangs and make more recoveries, police said.
“They were selling remdesivir injections for ₹25,000 to ₹40,000 per vial. The key players are still absconding,” said DCP (crime) Monika Bhardwaj.
Crime branch teams used dummy customers to strike deals with the racketeers and catch them red-handed.
One such customer contacted a person who assured delivery of one vial of remdesivir injection for ₹25,000 at Parmanand Chowk near GTB Nagar in north Delhi.
On April 21, the team caught Talwinder Singh alias Sajan, belonging to Amritsar in Punjab, and recovered from him three vials of remdesivir. Police said his gang was supplying injections across India using a courier company in Chandni Chowk.
Police searched the company’s office and arrested Jitendra Kumar, who charged ₹2,000 as commission for delivering each remdesivir injection. Their questioning led to the recovery of 68 more vials.
“Even when in our custody, Singh received a request from a person who was ready to pay ₹50 lakh as several members of his family were Covid positive,” said a senior police officer.
In the second operation, another team arrested Shoaib and Mohan with 10 vials of remdesivir injection from outside Batra hospital in south Delhi.
