The carton had already been used. Police say acetone took the batch number off.

The carton had already been used. Police say the batch number and the printed price came off with acetone.

Delhi Police Crime Branch has arrested 17 people for allegedly procuring, storing, repackaging and selling counterfeit and illegally diverted anti-cancer medicines. Four of the 17, investigators have said, were staff of leading private hospitals. These are police allegations. They are not convictions. The investigation is still moving, police have said, on beneficiaries and the money trail.

What was recovered is a pharmacy inventory that had left the ward. Five hundred and eighty-eight filled vials. Six empty vials. Seven empty medicine boxes. Three thousand and twenty-one other medicine units. Police have valued that stock at around ₹9 crore. With it they took ₹50 lakh in cash, devices, registers, diaries and packaging. A register in a cancer-drug case is not a footnote. It is how a second sale is supposed to be proved.

The intelligence, police say, came on 22 June. Seven Inter-State Cell teams raided Delhi and Navi Mumbai on 11 July. The first information report was registered on 12 July under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. That is the calendar this desk has. It will not invent a warehouse address that is not on the card, or a hospital name the public facts have not locked.

The method alleged is reuse. Original cartons and empty boxes were put back into the market. Batch numbers and the maximum retail price were allegedly removed with acetone. A cancer vial without a batch number is a vial that can be sold twice. Acetone is a solvent. In this file it is also the alleged instrument of a second label.

Three channels have been put on the record by investigators. Diversion from Central Government Health Scheme and government warehouse stocks. Theft from private hospitals. And counterfeit manufacture. Those are three different crimes that can feed one market. This desk will not collapse them into a single factory. The public sentence is that all three were alleged.

Keytruda is among the drugs police say were stolen or diverted. The seized brand list also names Darzalex, Imfinzi, Erbitux, Opdyta, Gazyva, Bavencio and Adcetris. Those names are oncology language. They are not a price list this desk will invent. The only value locked here is the around-₹9-crore police estimate on the recovered stock.

Jaswant Sharma, 42, a nursing-qualified oncology in-charge, is accused of removing vials. Anand Kumar was found with 337 anti-cancer vials. Deepak, also known as Ravi, with 108 vials and ₹6.50 lakh. In Gurugram, Mukesh's vehicle yielded 12 vials and ₹16.50 lakh. Shubham Chaudhary is named against a recovery of ₹23 lakh. Abhishek Vaishya against ₹4 lakh. Those rupee lines are recoveries as police have stated them. They are not a proven profit.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Aditya Gautam has described a network across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. A cancer patient in any of those places who paid for a named brand was, if the police case holds, at risk of a reused carton.

The named accused on the locked list include Abhishek Vaishya, Shubham and Suraj Chaudhary, Gagan, Satish Kumar, Mukesh, Vishwas Tyagi, Paramjeet Sheoran, Hyderabad's Srinivasulu Kalva, Ramdas Satish Kumar and Malugari Srinath Reddy, Mayank Garg, Deepak alias Ravi, and Jaswant Sharma. Seventeen arrests. Not every name on a police list is a convicted man. This desk will print the names as accused.

ACP Ramesh Lamba is among the officers named on the public card. The card does not assign him a sentence. This desk will not invent one.

What remains after the inventory is the public harm. Hospital staff and government stocks, if the allegation is right, fed a market in diverted and fake cancer drugs. A patient who believes a vial is Keytruda or Darzalex is not a trader. The money is ₹9 crore on the seized medicines and ₹50 lakh in cash, plus the named recoveries from Mukesh, Deepak, Shubham and Abhishek. The rest of the trail, police say, is still being followed.

Until a court writes, this is a Crime Branch file: 17 arrested, four of them hospital staff, three alleged channels, acetone on the batch number, a reused carton, and a set of vials that were meant for a ward.