As India grabbles with the second wave of COVID-19, there's high demand for oxygen, hospital beds and remdesivir. Owing to this demand, black-marketing of remdesivir has resulted in a further shortage of the anti-viral drug. But what's worse is some miscreants are selling fake remdesivir drugs in the black market to those in dire need of the drug. But the police are keeping a tight vigilance on the sale of fake remdesivir, busting many such rackets. Vadodara police commissioner Shamsher Singh raided a fake remdesivir packaging factory and nabbed two accused.

The factory, situated in Raghavpura village, was raided by the Vodadara Detection of Crime Branch on Thursday for allegedly packaging fake remdesivir injections. The police arrested two accused, namely Vivek Maheshwar, 34, and Naeem Vora, 47, of Anand district, while a third suspect is at large.

COVID-19 drug Remdesivir

According to the police, the third accused, Ahmedabad-based Nitesh Joshi, has been declared wanted and was allegedly supplying the packaging materials for the fake injections.

Racket busted led to factory

Vadodara police had busted a mega racket of remdesivir black marketing. The police arrested five accused earlier in the week, and seized 90 vials of Covifor brand by Hetero Pharmaceuticals. The Commissioner of Police sought response from Hetero to find out if the seized drugs were fake.

How to spot fake Remdesivir; look for these identifiers on packaging [details]

"The accused would label Piperacillin Tazobactam as remdesivir and package it in boxes similar to that of Hetero Pharma while they used other injectible called Terrific SB to label it as remdesivir belonging to Jubilant brand. The drugs are anti-biotics used for pneumonia and not anti-virals," Singh was quoted as saying.

The interrogation of the accused led the police to the Maheshwar's factory in Raghavpura village near Vadodara, where they reportedly found Rs 3.23 lakh worth of duplicate remdesivir.

The police has filed a case in a local court, and have booked all seven accused for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

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