Lucknow: Racket Selling Adulterated Blood Busted By Special Task Force

Five people have been arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of UP police for running a racket that sold blood mixed with equal amount of saline water and other chemicals to people in Lucknow, putting several lives at risk. The STF was accompanied by a Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) team during the raids.

Blood was adulterated by saline water and chemicals

The entire operation was being conducted by people who have studied only till the intermediate level. Blood was bought by the culprits from rickshaw-pullers and poor labourers. They added saline water and other harmful chemicals to increase its volume, sometimes even up to double.
As per the Hindustan Times report, the racket operators approached poor people, even homeless drug addicts, to donate blood and offered them any sum between Rs 200 to Rs 800 in return. The blood was never screened for HIV, Hepatitis, malaria etc.
“Prime accused Mohd Naseem has confessed that he was doing this business since over a year. He got blood bags printed in the name of various blood banks in the city, including Shekhar and OP Chaudhary hospitals,” said Drug Inspector Rama Shankar, who led the FSDA. The other arrested have been identified as Rashid, Raghvendra Pratap Singh, Pankaj Tripathi and Rajnish Nigam, The Times of India reported.
The culprits targeted to sell this adulterated blood to mostly poor people and drug addicts. “The gang members prepared two units from one unit by adding saline water and the units were sold for ₹3000 per unit,” informed Shankar.

The implications are life-threatening

“When blood with saline water is transfused into a patient it causes haemodilution. Saline water has a tendency to reduce the volume of red blood cells. So, if the body has haemoglobin at 12% it will come down to 4 or 5 per cent. The more you transfuse such blood the level can go down further thus posing a life risk to the patient,” said Prof Tulika Chandra, Head of Department of Transfusion Medicine at King George’s Medical University.
According to Rama Shankar, the quantity of blood (one unit converted into two units) was doubled by the perpetrators and ‘whole blood’ units as Packed Red Blood Cells (PRBC) were also sold by them. He added that saline water should never be used with blood transfusion, as per a report by Hindustan Times.

Fake blood worth Rs 1.5 Lakh found

STF sources said that for quite some time this racket had been operating in the Madiyaon area, reported News18. Blood bags, testing kits and other equipment worth Rs 1.5 lakh were found by the teams while raiding.
Six places were raided and in two of these places, several units of fake blood were found stored in domestic fridges. As per norms, blood units must never be stored in domestic fridges but in temperature controlled machines. Otherwise, its properties are destroyed and the blood contaminated. “We have asked the two blood banks to stop operations by exercising the section 22(1) of the Drug and Cosmetics Act 1940,” said Shankar.
Source: The Logical Indian
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