Coronavirus: Rahul Gandhi has been repeatedly urging government to increase testing. (File)
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has been stressing repeatedly on increased testing in the fight against coronavirus, today attacked those trying to earn huge profits from the sale of rapid testing kits and tweeted an appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to act against them.
The 49-year-old Congress MP was reacting to reports about India paying double for Chinese Rapid Antibody Tests that have been put on hold in many states because of faulty results. "When the entire country is fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, some people are still trying to earn profits using unscrupulous ways. Such a corrupt mindset makes me cringe. The country will never pardon them," Rahul Gandhi tweeted in Hindi.
In another tweet, he wrote: "That any human being would try & profiteer from the immeasurable suffering of millions of his brothers & sisters, is beyond belief & comprehension. This scam is an insult to every Indian. I urge the PM to act swiftly to bring the corrupt to justice. (sic)". Nearly 27,000 people in the country have tested positive for COVID-19 so far; more than 800 have died.
The government bought the Chinese coronavirus test kits at an inflated price from an Indian distributor, Real Metabolics, a legal dispute between the distributor and the importer that went to the Delhi High Court has revealed. Six lakh and fifty thousand kits, including Rapid Antibody Tests and RNA Extraction Kits were dispatched to India, Ambassador to China Vikram Misri had tweeted on April 16.
The test kits were bought by the importer, Matrix, for Rs 245 apiece from China. Yet, the distributors, Real Metabolics and Aark Pharmaceuticals, sold the same kits to the government for Rs 600 each. The court, while hearing the dispute, found that the mark-up was "on the higher side" and directed that the price of the kits be reduced to Rs 400 per kit.
Gaurav Gogoi, another Congress leader who reacted to the controversy, wrote: "When India needs to expand its testing, faulty antibody test kits have been bought by the Government of India at an inflated price. Accountability must be fixed for this gross mismanagement. Request the Centre to take action."
Congress's Ahmed Patel wrote: "The recent Delhi HC judgement has raised a pertinent question -Why was ICMR purchasing antibody test kits for Rs 600 per piece,which was imported for Rs 245? In the midst of a pandemic, no one should profit at the expense of poor. Hope Govt clarifies this."
Rahul Gandhi's latest tweet comes after he asked PM Modi on Sunday to remove what he called the "bottleneck" regarding testing of coronavirus in the country. "Experts agree that mass random testing is the key to beating Corona. In India, a bottle neck is stopping us from scaling testing from the current 40,000 per day to 1 lakh tests a day, for which test kits are already in stock. PM needs to act fast & clear the bottleneck," he wrote.
The Indian Council of Medical Research, the nodal body for coronavirus testing, had received complaints from Rajasthan, Bengal and Tamil Nadu that the kits were faulty. The ICMR had assured a resolution.