Forget food and milk Hyderabad, even blood from your blood banks could be adulterated

According to reports, the adulterated samples had 40% saline and 60% blood.

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From sweets tainted with cement to stale and unhygienic meat, Hyderabad has been struggling with a major adulteration problem. Shockingly, however, it’s not just the food. Even blood bought from blood banks is now being adulterated to make a quick profit.

On Saturday, the Rachakonda police raided a blood bank in the city and found several units of blood that had been diluted with saline solution.

According to reports, the police raided Venus Blood Bank at Malakpet after a patient referred there by Global Hospitals was sold the adulterated blood.

“As the patient was in need of blood, Global Hospital authorities asked the family to make necessary arrangements. They went to Venus Blood Bank and bought two packets of blood by paying Rs 3,000. But the hospital doctors found the blood in diluted form and refused to infuse it to the accident victim,'' SOT (LB Nagar) Inspector P Venkateshwarlu told TOI.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, an officer from Global Hospitals said, "When we tested the blood in our laboratory we found that it had 40% saline and 60% blood. We immediately took the sample and the test results and submitted them to the police.”

Two people including a doctor were later arrested, and the police seized packets of the allegedly adulterated blood from the bank.

According to TOI, the accused were booked under Sections 420 (cheating), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide if such act causes hurt to any person), 272 (adulteration of food or drink intended for sale) and 273 (sale of noxious food or drink) of the IPC.

Blood Adulteration Racket busted by Rachakonda SOT. pic.twitter.com/c50klXwDzW — Rachakonda Police (@RachakondaCop) June 24, 2017

This is not the first such incident reported in Hyderabad, either. Last year, the Sultan Bazaar police busted a similar racket, where blood bags consisting of 60% blood and 40% saline were being sold to patients at a government maternity hospital. Ironically, one of the scamsters involved reportedly sold the adulterated blood by warning patients about the ‘hazards’ of blood supplied by private blood banks.

The latest incident also comes in the wake of repeated efforts by municipal officials to tackle food adulteration in Hyderabad.

Earlier this month, a police task force had cracked down on several ice cream parlours and sweet shops adulterating their products with a wide range of chemicals and substances. "They were adulterating ice creams by mixing non-ISI certified milk powder, expired synthetic colours, electrolysis chemical powders and vanaspati. Sweets, especially petha, were being adulterated by mixing white wash cement, phitkari, sodium hydro sulphide and artificial food colours. Tomato, chilli sauces and vinegar are being manufactured illegally without licence,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Task Force, B Limba Reddy had said.

Prior to that, 15 people were booked at multiple dairy farms for injecting oxytocin into buffaloes for increasing milk yields. Such oxytocin contaminates the milk and can result in serious issues like breast cancer, prostate cancer and male impotency, the police said in a statement.

In the first week of April, the GHMC had cancelled the licenses of 91 shops for selling carbide-ripened fruits and penalised half-dozen restaurants for unhygienic conditions. Just days earlier, it had raided 69 hotels and found 54 of them using stale meat and running dirty kitchens.