New Delhi: Chemotherapy injections refilled with antifungal fluids, a well-oiled network of websites and employees of top cancer hospitals running for at least two years — this is how the Delhi Police Crime Branch has described the alleged fake cancer drugs racket it unearthed a few months ago, in its charge sheet.
A dozen people have been arrested in the case so far. All are employees of hospitals in Delhi and Gurugram, and have been named in the chargesheet filed last month, which has been accessed by ThePrint.
The accused allegedly lured people on the promise of providing expensive chemo injections at “affordable rates”.
According to the chargesheet that runs over 11,000 pages, the 12 accused made crores through the racket. While two of the accused worked in pharmacies at Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute & Research Centre in Delhi, some others worked in the oncology and haematology departments of the Fortis Memorial Research Institute and Millennium Cancer Center in Gurugram, as well as Venkateshwar Hospital in Delhi.
The investigating team had reached out to the hospitals and owners of pharmacies and their responses are part of the chargesheet. The accused working in these hospitals were clinical pharmacists in various departments as well, responsible for mixing of cytotoxic drugs (used to destroy malignant cells), as well as for administering chemotherapy to patients.
The investigation team, the chargesheet states, seized from the accused chemo injections of different brands, seven international and two Indian brands including Opdyta, Keytruda and Opdivo, 140 vials of fake medication, 197 empty vials, empty cartons, packaging material, vial cap sealing machine, heat gun machine and three manual cap sealings, all of which have been listed as evidence.
Also Read: ‘If there’s hell…it’s here’ — A day with patients in DMCH, north Bihar’s mainstay hospital
Money traced, WhatsApp chats on record
The chargesheet mentions that Rs 89.5 lakh and USD 19,000 in currency have been seized as part of the racket. Further, Rs 2.51 crore allegedly made through the fraud was found to be deposited in various bank accounts, which have now been frozen.
WhatsApp chats between the accused, call detail records, call interceptions and other money transaction details are also part of the evidence mentioned in the chargesheet.
The forensic report of the substances in the vials seized is yet to be received by the Crime Branch. However, according to the police, the investigation has revealed that the racket kingpin, identified as Viphil Jain, had allegedly planned to fill the anti-cancer injections with Fluconazole antifungal medicine, which costs Rs 150-200. Jain had previously been selling the fake injections for Rs 1 to 3 lakh, depending on the brands.
The chargesheet also mentions that the police traced identities of nine victims who took these spurious drugs, one of whom died of cancer.
The racket had come to light when the Crime Branch arrested seven of the 12 accused in March this year, including kingpin Jain who had worked as a pharmacist for 15 years and was also employed at different pharmacies in the Bhagirath Palace market.
Jain allegedly came up with the idea of the syndicate in 2022 as the chemotherapy drugs were not easily available in the open market.
The other arrested accused are Suraj Shah, Neeraj Chauhan, Parvez, Komal Tiwari, Abhinay Kohli, Tushar Chauhan, Aditya Krishna, Rohit Singh Bisht, Jitender, Majid Khan and Sajid. The last five were arrested later in the course of the investigation.
Tiwari and Kohli, both pharmacists, were working at Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute’s cytotoxic admixture unit, according to the chargesheet.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: One woman’s fight to pull AIIMS-Rishikesh out of a decade of raids, scams, lies