Remdesivir smuggling: Cops to probe Tripura connection

Crime branch looks for more proof about anonymous accused

Even as the Ahmedabad Crime Branch, which is investigating the illegal import and black marketing of Covid-19 drug Remdesivir at exorbitant rates, announced the arrest of one and detention of three other accused in the case, it will now focus on how the drugs entered the country.

While investigators on Friday said they had traced the link of how the accused used to receive, transport, scratch out actual prices and then sell it at high rates to doctors and relatives of Covid-19 patients, they will now focus on the smuggling part of the case. Officials said Parth Goyani knew Bangladeshi citizen Shabbir Ahmed as a pharma drugs exporter for the past one-and-a-half years who had assured to send him the much-in-demand and hardly available Remdesivir injections.

Ahmed allegedly sent the drugs to Agartala airport by air freight. Accused Sandip Mathukiya received the consignment from anonymous persons at the reception area of Hotel Ginger. Officials said that CCTV footage of the hotel would be checked and the accused traced and detained. Mathukiya sent the foreign-manufactured Remdesivir via two flights, on July 7 and 12, to Ahmedabad. Sandip Mathukiya and Parth Goyani began selling them in Ahmedabad and Sandip’s brother Yash began doing the same in Surat.