Summary Arrested criminals were handed over to the Cantt authorities.
MULTAN (Dunya News) – Robbers stealing medicines on Friday were caught red-handed by officials of the administrative department of Nishtar Hospital. The gang responsible for swiping medications had 3 members including a woman. The arrested criminals were handed over to the Cantt authorities.
All of the 3 robbers, Nasreen Bibi, Aas Muhammad and Shaukat were employees of the hospital providing janitorial services. Shaukat was found hiding away an injection. Upon investigation of his actions, Shaukat provided names of his accomplices as well.
The hospital’s administration stated that the group had been responsible for stealing medications worth more than Rs. 50,000.
Police took the suspects into custody and have started their interrogation.
The problem of medicine pilferage has been a growing problem in many hospitals of various cities of the country. The medicines are either sold personally by the thieves at altered prices or sold to the wholesale medicine shops. Earlier this year raids were conducted in major public hospitals of Lahore including Services, Jinnah and Lahore General Hospital by the health department. Health department stated that a team of health officials had found medicines from public hospitals worth millions of rupees which had been stolen from pharmacies of these hospitals. The Additional Medical Superintendents and Chief Pharmacists of the hospitals were then asked to appear before a committee to explain the thefts.The inquiry was ordered by Adviser to Chief Minister on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique
Senior officials of some of the public hospitals have also been found sometimes of being in the embezzlement of medicines. Medicines stolen from pharmacies of government hospitals usually end up in private pharmacies or wholesale companies where they are sold at hiked prices to the citizens.
