In April this year, two staffers at the Kodigehalli Primary Health Center (PHC) in Bengaluru were caught on camera faking a swab collection. A video that surfaced on social media showed two staffers who opened fresh swabs and put them in another vial without taking a sample. Following this, the police registered a case. The incident, which had come to light during the second wave of the pandemic when several people were looking for tests, had triggered outrage. However, it was just one of many such crimes that have been unearthed by the police. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began there have been several situations where some people took advantage of many across the country facing distress due to the COVID-19 infection and the lockdown, and engineered scams.
TNM spoke to Bengaluru Police Joint Commissioner (Crime), Sandeep Patil to understand what kind of pandemic-related crimes had come to light in the city since March 2020.
The police said that during the peak of the first wave, fake masks and sanitisers were being made, which were ineffective in preventing infection. “When there were shortages of N95 or other such specific types of masks, some people made fake masks and sold them as the original. In the case of sanitisers, the scammers would fill bottles with useless liquids such as kerosene and sell them as branded products,” said Bengaluru Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) (Crime), BS Angadi.
In addition to making fake masks and sanitisers, medical shops that had a stock of these products sold them at exorbitant prices. In one day last year, the Bengaluru police had conducted raids on over 200 such medical shops.
During the lockdown both in 2020 and 2021 several scams were unearthed, where scammers would trick people into making advance payments for products, especially alcohol, with a promise of home delivery. One such scam came to light where a woman in Bengaluru lost Rs 1.6 lakh, after she was tricked into making five online payments for a bottle of wine, with the scammer repeatedly saying that the transaction had failed.
Since the pandemic began, police said that several scammers have posed as volunteers to take advance payments with an assurance of providing oxygen or Remdesivir and then absconded. “When there were shortages of oxygen and Remdesivir, scammers would claim that they were volunteers. When people contacted them requesting oxygen, beds or Remdesivir, they would provide an assurance that they would be supplied immediately after a payment. Once they received the money, they would escape,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) BS Angadi
One of the more serious crimes during the second wave of the coronavirus was surrounding the supply and distribution of oxygen cylinders. According to the police, several suppliers would stock up oxygen cylinders and sell it on the black market for supernormal profits. Eight such scams were busted by the Central Crime Branch.
DCP Angadi said, “We have come across cases where oxygen suppliers hoarded cylinders and sold them at exorbitant prices, sometimes at Rs 10,000 or 20,000 even.” According to the police, this was more than 10 times the price fixed by the government.
Angadi also pointed out that there were several scams surrounding Remdesivir and Amphotericin B. On April 19, a fake Remdesivir racket was busted in Mysuru, where a staff nurse allegedly filled up empty bottles with saline and sold them as Remdesivir with the help of two medical representatives. In another case, expired Remdesivir vials were relabeled and sold in Bengaluru. There were also cases where nurses and doctors would administer a smaller dosage of Remdesivir to a COVID-19 patient and then would sell the rest in the black market. Similarly, Amphotericin B which is the drug used to treat the black fungus infection was hoarded like Remdesivir and sold on the black market for supernormal profits. Sandeep Patil revealed that a total of 56 Remdesivir-related scams were busted in Bengaluru.
With vaccine distribution beginning in the country in 2021 and accessibility being a challenge, many people allegedly took advantage of the situation to divert the supply and sell them at higher rates. In one case, a doctor from Manjunathnagar in Bengaluru resorted to smuggling vaccines from a Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) and administered it at a price of Rs 500 outside, when it was supposed to be free. DCP Angadi said, “A doctor in the Manjunathnagar Primary Health Center (PHC) would provide a reduced dosage of vaccine at the PHC and then would later smuggle the remaining vaccine back to her home and hand it over to a nurse, who is her friend. They then administered the vaccines illegally for Rs 500.”
When TNM asked Joint Commissioner Sandeep Patil how one could protect themselves from getting scammed, he said, “Firstly, about online scams, people must not make advance payments on websites or to people they don’t know. One must only make advance payments from reputed and well-established platforms. Secondly, hoarding and black marketing of any essential product is illegal and people must refrain from doing so.” He further said, “In Bengaluru we actively identify and bust scams. Even if someone does engineer and execute a scam, it won’t go on for too long and they will be caught eventually.”