Archives for May 2021

Pramesh Jain

The Central Crime Branch,Bengaluru which is investigating the alleged bed-blocking scam in BBMP, arrested two more persons in this connection.A war room employee used to share the distress callers numbers with his associate and later the bed was blocked by taking money from such patients.

The accused have been identified as,Varun S,works in Bommanahalli war room and his associate Yeshwanth Kumar Murali,21.

Senior officer told reporters,Investigations revealed that Varun used to gather details pof patients and their family members approaching the war room for help and hand it over to Yeshwanth Kumar.

The arrest comes a day after Bommanahalli MLA Satish Reddy’s aide Babu was arrested following CCTV footage evidence and war room staff’s statements.

Yeshwanth in turn contacts the family members depending on their desperate situation,offers to arrange a bed for a price .

Varun using his resources arranges the bed and both would get the share of their money out of it.

While probing the scam,the CCB officials stumble upon their names and take them into custody.A detailed questioning led them to confess.

The police have now taken their bank account details to ascertain how many people the duo had cheated and their possible links with the accused arrested earlier .

The CCB have so far arrested 11 persons and are investigating further he added.

Pramesh Jain

The CCB Officials on Thursday arrested two cab drivers for selling oxygen cylinders in black market charging exorbitant price.

The accused has been identified as Arun Kumar, 34 from KGF and Syed Shakeeb, 27,resident of Audugodi .

Senior officer told media persons,our OCW Wing of CCB received a credible information that two persons are indulged in selling Oxygen Cylinders in black market charging exorbitant price and will be taking in two car passing through Yelahanka New Town area.

Based on information team headed by ACP, Dharmendra HN and team swung into action and rushed to spot and team were on alert to catch the culprits as they noticed two cars coming they flagged them and intercepted the car and found Jumbo Medical cylinder in their possession.

The accused were arrested near Yelahanka new town while they were heading to Doddaballapura alone with three cylinders in two cars .

During investigation the accused confessed the crime and revealed that using his contact,sourced oxygen cylinders and sold them to the people in the rural areas in black.

With their arrest the team has seized 5 Jumbo Medical cylinder from them and a case has been registered in Yelahanka New Town police station.Both the accused has been taken the accused into custody to investigate further .

Finally Bengaluru Police Commissioner,Kamal Pant has appreciated Joint CP Crime,Sandeep Patil,DCP Crime-1,KP Ravikumar,ACP, Dharmendra HN,PI,Girish Naik C and other crime staff has been appreciated for the commendable job done by them and a suitable reward will be given to the team he added.

BENGALURU: Hospitals in the city continue to battle with a record number of cases of mucormycosis, or black fungus, with the most crucial anti-fungal drug — Amphotericin-B — being provided in “trickles” from the government. Hospitals, however, agree that government control of the drug is necessary to avoid hoarding and misuse.The Centre on Thursday allocated 5,190 vials of Amphotericin-B to Karnataka. 

“There was zero availability of Amphotericin-B in the hospital till Wednesday morning, when we received 40 vials of the drug from the government. On Thursday evening, the vials were exhausted and we are back to zero stock of Amphotericin-B. In the last two weeks we have received 63 murcomycosis patients. Of them, 55 have been operated upon and six have passed away,” said Dr Sanjiv Lewin, chief of medical services, St Johns Medical College & Hospital. He said in the absence of Amphotericin-B, the hospital is administering Posaconazole to patients, but there is a shortage of even this drug. “We have received 180 doses of Posaconazole from the government on Wednesday and we are now left with 40 doses,” he said.

Surgical debridement accompanied with Amphotericin-B is key to controlling the infection. Nearly a century-old-disease, which was considered rare during the pre-Covid time, is now a medical surge with uncontrolled blood sugar and indiscriminate use of immuno-suppressant drugs to treat Covid patients  emerging as the main reasons behind the rise in black fungus cases.“We hardly used to see three to five cases in a year. Smaller hospitals may not have come across even a single case before the pandemic. Today, we have 35 cases in the hospital and we are getting Amphotericin-B in trickles from the government,” said Dr Raman,  consultant ENT specialist, Manipal Hospital, Old Airport Road.

Lack of Amphotericin-B makes treatment incomplete. “We do good surgeries, but feel disgusted at the end in the absence of the important arm of treatment,” said Dr Raman.“From 3-4 cases a year before Covid, we have recently operated on 70 patients in the hospital. The drugs are not freely available,” said Dr Susheen Dutt, consultant ENT specialist, Fortis Hospital. “It was an uncommon infection before Covid. We hardly got 30 cases in a year since the 1990s. In the last two weeks, the hospital has got 63 patients,” said Dr Lewin.

BENGALURU: With an addition of 24,214 fresh cases, the state’s Covid-19 tally touched the 25-lakh mark (25,23,998 cases) on Thursday. With this, the positivity rate rose to 8.64 per cent from 8.60 per cent. The death toll too crossed the 27,000-mark (27,405) since the beginning of the pandemic last year with 476 people succumbing to the virus in the State on Thursday.

In Bengaluru, 5,949 cases were added which took the city tally  to 11,43,878 cases.Also, 273 deaths took the city’s mortality rate from 1.06 per cent to 1.08 per cent.There were 31,459 discharges in the State on Thursday, which took the recovery rate to 82.97 per cent from  82.52 per cent. Active cases in the State too saw a dip from 4.09 lakh on Wednesday to  4.02 lakh on Thursday.