Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) authority has lodged a case against a senior nurse of DMCH, who was nabbed on Tuesday for stealing expensive medicines from the government facility.
The DMCH authority filed the case with Shahbagh police station on Wednesday.
A probe committee has also been formed to investigate against the staff nurse Tapan Kumar, who is also in charge of the Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn & Plastic Surgery (SHNIBPS) of DMCH, said Prof Khan Abul Kalam Azad, principal of the DMCH.
“The committee will provide a report within the next 3 days. Later we will request Directorate General Of Nursing & Midwifery (DGNM) to take steps against him, as he is a second class gazetted employee and we have no authority to take action against Tapan,” he said.
The decision came after the authority held a meeting in view of his crime on Wednesday.
Besides, he is also being served a show-cause notice for his wrongdoing.
“We have removed him from the post of in-charge and appointed a new one temporarily. A permanent one would be appointed within a few days,” said the principal.
There are regular allegations from patients of DMCH and other government hospitals of not having free medicines for them.
Instead of providing the medicines to the poor, a lot of those were allegedly sold to the third party.
When asked, Prof Khan Abul Kalam Azad said, they have earlier taken actions against those at DMCH. But this is the first allegation from SHNIBPS.
“We will try to be more careful in future so that no one can commit such a crime,” he said.
Intelligence officials along with police arrested Tapan on Tuesday evening when he was leaving the hospital with stolen government medicines worth around Tk30,000.
Officials from the National Security Intelligence (NSI) and members from DMCH police camp jointly took part in the operation.
Tapan was later handed over to Shahbagh police.
Shahbagh police station Officer-in-Charge (OC) Abul Hasan said Tapan will be sent to the court soon.
Sources said Tapan, who is also the founding leader of Swadhinata Nurses Parishad, had been involved in stealing medicines, including high-power antibiotics, throughout his long career at the hospital.
Meanwhile, two medicine sellers at the pharmacy of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and Hospital were arrested for stealing medicines which were provided by the government to distribute among the impoverished patients for free.
Sher-E Bangla police station Sub-Inspector (SI) Jahirul Islam said Nirmol Kumar Sarkar and Bashir Uddin Ahmed were arrested by NSI officials and handed over to them.
“They would steal medicine and sell those to third parties. They were arrested at about 3:30pm [on Wednesday],” the SI said.