Four Tata hospital officials arrested in drug purchase scam

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday arrested four officials of Tata Memorial Hospital for their involvement in illegal sale of cancer medicines meant for free distribution to needy patients.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday arrested four officials of Tata Memorial Hospital for their involvement in illegal sale of cancer medicines meant for free distribution to needy patients.

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The arrests come exactly after one year of busting of the racket by the CBI. The agency arrested Y. B. Dixit, office in-charge of Dispensary, P. B. Dhake, Namita Deshpande and Leena Nakhare (all pharmacists).

According to CBI, the four had made fake memos and delivery notes to show that the medicines were issued to different wards of the hospital and to doctors.

During investigation, it was found that there was no physical delivery of medicines.

The accused also made fake memos to show that medicines were given to some needy patients. On investigation, the CBI found that about 25 such patients had died long back.

“The medicines were actually sold in the open market illegally by these people,” a senior CBI official said.

The official said that the agency took so long to arrest these people as there were voluminous documents to scrutinise. “To make our case strong, we also took sample studies of five dead patients on whose names the medicines were shown issued,” the official said.

Though the CBI is yet to find out the exact loss caused to the hospital because of the racket, they estimate it to be worth more than Rs 100 crore.

During investigation, the CBI had found that the racket was on for four years.

The CBI had also found that the accused had even siphoned off the protocol medicines which were manufactured by the Department of Biotechnology and given to the hospital for experiment or research purposes.

Superintendent of Police, CBI, Abhin Modak confirmed the arrests.