Guj: 2 held for repackaging, selling antibiotic medicine as Remdesivir

A day after nabbing five persons with 90 vials of Remdesivir, the police in Gujarat's Vadodara city has caught two more people allegedly involved in repackaging an antibiotic medicine as Remdesivir, an official said on Friday.

After recovering 90 injections from a gang of five, the police got the vials tested in the laboratory and found that they were all fake, Vadodara police commissioner Shamsher Singh said.

One of the accused Jatin Patel informed the police that he had acquired the fake injections from one Vivek Maheshwar, who runs a medical store in neighbouring Anand town, the official said.

''Based on the information, we raided a farmhouse in Raghavpura near Vadodara and arrested Maheshwar and his aide Naeemben Vora. We recovered around 2,200 vials of an antibiotic medicine, which were being repackaged as Remdesivir,'' Singh said.

Maheshwar had allegedly rented the farmhouse two weeks ago to carry out this illegal activity, he said.

The police also recovered stickers and boxes, which were to be used for repackaging, the official said.

A primary probe has revealed that as many as 1,100 duplicate Remdesivir injections, prepared by Maheshwar, were already sold to needy persons by Patel and one Nitesh Joshi, who was arrested by the Ahmedabad police on Thursday.

Remdesivir injections, widely used to treat critical coronavirus patients, are in high demand nationwide after the recent surge in COVID-19 cases.

''Maheshwar and Joshi had hatched a plan to make some extra bucks by selling fake Remdesivir to needy people. They would buy an antibiotic medicine for Rs 150 per bottle and sell it to people like Jatin Patel for Rs 4,000 after repackaging,'' Singh said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)