MULTAN: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has arrested two more suspects, including two officials of the health department, in connection with the theft of medicines of the Nishtar Hospital and health departments of Multan and Bahawalpur.

Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, FIA Deputy Director Babar Sheharyar said the FIA had got information that a huge quantity of unregistered medicines and medicines being stolen from the government health institutions were being dispatched to Peshawar.

He added the FIA teams conducted two major raids on Aug 24 and Aug 26 in which a huge quantity of medicines were recovered.

“We have arrested medicine store in-charge of district health office Bahawalpur, Nasir Mehmood, and storekeeper district health office at Multan, Ishtiaq Ahmed Bhatti, after the arrest of three private suspects, namely Akif Majeed, Khawaja Tahir Farooq and Muhammad Waqar.”

Mr Sheharyar said action had been taken under the Drug Act 1976, saying the FIA had the authority to conduct raids under the act while the investigation was still under way.

Meanwhile, the secretary of the Specialised Healthcare and Medical Education Department has issued directions for special audit of four years regarding the purchase of medicines, surgical and non-surgical disposables at the Nishtar Hospital. The director internal audit wing of the department, Sarfraz Ahmed, has been asked to submit a report in this regard within seven days.

Earlier, the health secretary on Aug formed a committee headed by Mr Ahmad with direction to submit a report within two days after the FIA conducted the first raid on Aug 24.

Another committee was constituted by Nishtar Hospital Medical Superintendent Dr Abdul Rehman Qureshi and, in its preliminary probe report, the committee had identified serious irregularities in the purchase of the medicines for the hospital under MS Dr Ashiq Malik, Additional Medicinal Superintendent Dr Siddique Saqib and pharmacist Amina Arif.

BAHAWALPUR: An FIA Multan team on Sunday raided the office/medical store of the chief executive officer (CEO) of district health authority (DHA) and arrested two storekeepers for interrogation.

Dawn learnt the raid was conducted despite the closed offices and the medical stores on Sunday. Those arrested have been identified as storekeeper Nasir Dogar and assistant storekeeper Muhammad Ramzan and they were taken into custody on the charge of theft of medicines from the government medical store.

Health authority Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Saeed Asghar confirmed that the FIA team had taken two health employees in custody and shifted them to Multan office.

He said the FIA team carried out the raid on Sunday afternoon and added that he had issued orders for sealing the medical store to avoid any further pilferage of medicines and also ordered a four-member committee, comprising health officers, to conduct an inquiry into the FIA raid.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2017