Bhopal– A brazen scam at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhopal has exposed deep rot in India’s premier healthcare institutions, with six individuals—including blood bank staff and interstate buyers—arrested for pilfering 1,150 units of fresh frozen plasma (FFP) worth Rs 11.72 lakh and funneling it into the black market for biomedical drug production.
The heist, executed over a frantic nine-day window from September 18 to 27, 2025, targeted the institute’s blood bank, where outsourced employees exploited lax oversight to siphon off vital plasma meant for patient transfusions. Led by Ankit Kelkar (26), a contractual worker whose company’s tender expired on September 30, the gang—comprising Amit Jatav (25), Lucky Pathak (30), and his brother Deepak Pathak (35)—confessed during interrogation to smuggling the contraband in unmarked containers. The plasma was offloaded at Rs 5,800 per liter to private labs in Nashik and Aurangabad, Maharashtra, operated by buyers Shyam Badgujar (27) and Karan Chavan (25), who planned to repackage it for sale to pharmaceutical firms manufacturing burn-treatment drugs like Albowin. Police raids recovered 1,123 units—equivalent to about 224 liters—from a Thalassemia Blood Bank in Indore, halting the onward supply chain.
The plot unraveled after AIIMS officials, alerted by inventory discrepancies, installed CCTV cameras that captured Kelkar in the act. Blood bank in-charge Dr. Pratul Sinha’s statement prompted security officer Gyanendra Prasad to file an FIR on September 29 under Section 305(A) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for theft and criminal conspiracy. Bagsewania police, acting on suspicion, nabbed Kelkar first; his disclosures snowballed into the full network, including the Pathak brothers’ ties to Bhopal’s Live Saver Blood Bank and Badgujar’s Indore front.
“This is a betrayal of public trust—plasma donated selflessly for the needy was commodified for profit,” fumed Additional DCP Gautam Solanki at a press briefing, quoting the accused: “We stole 1,150 FFP packets between September 18 and 27, selling them to labs in Maharashtra.” All six—Kelkar from Arera Hills, Jatav from Govindpura, the Pathaks from Ratibad, Badgujar from Nashik, and Chavan from Aurangabad—were remanded to custody until October 20 for deeper probes into accomplices and supply routes.
Health experts decry the scandal as symptomatic of understaffed blood banks nationwide, where contractual lapses enable such graft. AIIMS Bhopal has suspended operations for a forensic audit, while the Madhya Pradesh Health Department vows stricter vendor vetting. As investigations widen to pharma end-users, authorities warn of potential charges under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, signaling a crackdown on healthcare’s shadowy underbelly amid rising demands for blood products.
