Thief in Haryana returns COVID vaccines with apology note, says ‘did not know’

A thief in Haryana stole over 1,700 doses of anti-COVID vaccine from a hospital on Thursday but later returned them, with a ‘sorry’ note that said he was not aware of the contents of the bags while he was taking them. 

In Hindi, the thief on a paper wrote, “Sorry, I didn’t know it was medicines for corona,” and with the returned bag, which was full of Covaxin and Covishield doses, reported PTI. The incident happened in Haryana’s Jind. 

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The thief had stolen a total of 1,270 doses of Covishield and 440 doses of Covaxin from the storeroom of Jind General Hospital, according to the SHO of Civil Lines police station Rajender Singh.

“The accused did not touch any other vaccine, medicine, cash, etc. in the store,” Singh said.

The police are now tracking the thief as he returned the bag to a man at a tea shop outside the city’s Civil Lines police station. The accused left the bag at the tea shop saying it was food, which he was delivering, for the police but needs to run another errand.

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The Haryana police now suspect that the thief was at the hospital to steal the anti-viral drug, Remdesivir but mistakenly stole the vaccines. 

“It is possible that he wanted to steal some other vaccine or drug and returned what he had stolen after learning that it wasn’t that,” Singh said.

This comes as India is soon to start the vaccination of people against COVID-19 above 18 years, starting May 1, the registration of which is starting on the Co-Win portal on Saturday. 

India is witnessing a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases, as on Wednesday it recorded over 300,000 infections, the world’s biggest single-day spike ever.