Hyderabad: Six held for blood dilution; owner helped accused flee

Hyderabad: Diluting donated blood and converting one blood packet into two was the art of lab technician K. Narendra Prasad, who worked at the Koti Maternity Hospital and also in private blood banks in the city.

The police has arrested him and five others and found that most of their working hours would be spent on converting single blood packets into two. This was done in the presence of other laboratory technicians who were also a party to it.

Sultan Bazaar police has arrested Prasad, lab technicians T. Naga Raju and K. Ramesh and another lab technician at Koti Maternity Hospital, Raghavendra Raghav.

Owner of Rakshita Blood Bank Soumya Reddy and administrator of Balaji Blood Bank P. Naresh have also been arrested. During duty hours, Narendra used transfusion pipes to transfer blood from one whole packet to an empty packet and fill it halfway, said to the police. The blood was then diluted with saline.

Accused worked part-time in several blood banks
Diluting donated blood and converting one blood packet into two packets was the art of lab technician K. Narendra Prasad.

These packets would be labelled with stickers of private blood banks and sold to unsuspecting patients by Raju and Ramesh at the private blood banks. For this, a commission of Rs 100 per packet (selling the packet) and Rs 200 per packet (selling the packet and also forging an entry in the registry book) was paid to them.

Prasad had worked part-time in different blood banks in the last two years. He worked at Aditya Blood Bank at Hamuman Tekdi, Sanjeevani Blood Bank at RTC Crossroads, Rakshita Blood Bank at Pultibowli X Roads and Balaji Blood Bank at Malakpet.

Inspector of police P. Shivashanker Rao of Sultan Bazaar said, “The labels for the blood bank packets were printed at Gowliguda. He got them designed and used them for these packets. The designs and prints were kept by him at home. He also kept blood plasma packets at his home in Saroornagar.”

Raghavendra, another lab technician at Koti Maternity Hospital, had borrowed a large sum of money from Prasad and didn’t disclose this activity on the government premises. Meanwhile, Soumya and Naresh had provided financial assistance to Prasad to abscond when the scam broke out on May 19.