Spurious medicines supplied to RMCH?

After the haul, police lodged a case against five persons including three medicine suppliers to RMCH for producing adulterated medicines and marketing those.

Three medicine suppliers are Abul Kalam Azad, Joinal Abedin, and Bablu.

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Joynal Abedin owns the Ruma cinema at Panner Dighi in the Sader upzila from where DB police recovered the adulterated medicines and equipment use in their production.

DB Sub-inspector Ashok Shingh who had led the drive said police are looking for the three medicine suppliers who allegedly disappeared immediately after the recovery.

DB sources said that a well organised gang in Dhap area in Rangpur town in collaborating with some unscrupulous officials had been supplying spurious medicines to RMCH and other hospitals in the town for long.

"But they were very influential and difficult to be brought to book", one sources said.

"They had formed a network in and around the RMCH and the hospital authorities were helpless as they had musclemen", he said.

A professor at RMCH preferring unanimity told this correspondent that a number of medical officers on several occasions had complained of "ineffective medicines" but the authorities did not pay heed to their words.

A guard at RMCH said that a huge quantity of medicines were taken away from the RMCH store room in a micro-bus on Friday after the recovery of adulterated medicines from a fake laboratory 500 yards from the hospital on Wednesday.

It is now thought by some quarters that the adulterated medicines procured for the current fiscal year were taken away in the wake of the police drive.

When contacted, RMCH Director Dr. KM Sahariar said he did not know anything about the matter and asked this correspondent to talk to Dr Ershadul Bari, head of the medicine procurement committee.

Dr. Bari could not be contacted. Sources at RMCH said he is not attending office since August 4.