The police arrested six men on Thursday on charges of stealing 1123 units of Fresh Frozen Plasma (FFP) from the blood bank of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here, besides seizing Rs 8.57 lakh cash from them.
According to the police, the incidents of theft of blood and plasma units from the AIIMS blood bank were being noticed for a long time by senior doctors and the blood bank in-charge.
Some days ago, the AIIMS authorities installed hidden CCTV cameras in the blood bank.
Consequently, an outsourced employee of the blood bank, Ankit Kelkar, was caught on camera stealing some units of plasma, and handing them over to an unidentified person.
After that, the blood bank officials lodged a complaint at the Bagh Sevaniya police station here.
Following investigations, the police nabbed the six accused.
According to DCP (Zone 2) Vivek Singh, the case was registered involving the theft of plasma meant for medical use. He said a total of 1123 plasma units, Rs 8.57 lakh in cash, and a deep freezer were seized from the arrested accused, who used to sell the stolen blood and plasma to private blood banks in Maharashtra.
He said that the arrested employee and associates of a private blood bank conspired to steal plasma from the AIIMS blood bank.
Besides Ankit Kelkar, the other arrested persons are Amit Jatav, Lucky Pathak, Deepak Pathak, Shyam Badgurjar, and Karan Chavvan.
Sources said the accused used to sell the stolen plasma at the rate of Rs 5800 per litre. The accused had stolen about 1150 units in total, which is about 224 litres.