Karnataka HC denies bail to man accused of running Remdesivir racket

Bengaluru: A medical representative has had his anticipatory bail petition denied by the Karnataka High Court in a case where he is accused of illegally supplying Remdesivir injections at a price seven times higher than mandated by the government. The High Court noted that the offence was one which "cheated the public at large", especially during the peak of the second wave of Covid-19 and so was inexcusable in the eyes of the law.

The case was uncovered in a sting operation conducted by Sub-Inspector Vinod Jiragale, Sub-Inspector at J.C Nagar Police StatIon in Bengaluru. The police had sent an undercover agent to the other accused in the case, who offered to give them Remdesivir injections at ₹25,000 a shot. The first accused in the case, who delivered the injections, named the medical representative in his voluntary statement as the supplier of the drug.

The representative had argued that he was falsely implicated in the case and that there was no direct recovery of the drug from him. He had offered to abide by any and all conditions laid down by the court if granted bail, which the court dismissed. The prosecution opposed the plea by stating that: "The accused persons have demanded seven times more than the actual rate of medicine and they have misused the circumstances of the people who are suffering from Covid-19 and have sold the same in the black market for their greediness."

Several raids were conducted in Bengaluru in the months of April-June which uncovered various Remdesivir rackets that took advantage of the Covid-19 wave to sell the antiviral frug at massively-inflated prices. In May, the Karnataka High Court had denied the bail application of pharmacist Sohail Pasha who was allegedly caught selling the injections for ₹7000 a shot. The court noted that it was imperative that all steps should be taken to eradicate black marketing of essential drugs and the sale of spurious/fake drugs