(COLOMBO) -Former Sri Lankan Minister Keheliya Rambukwella who is currently in remand prison over an alleged drug scandal refused an offer to attend Parliament sessions held on Wednesday, prison officials said.
On Tuesday, the former health minister and later Environment Minister tendered his resignation to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who in return, had accepted it. Later, a gazette notification was published, confirming the resignation of Rambukwella as the Environment Minister.
Rambukwella was arrested on February 2 after he arrived at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to record a statement on the importing of a substandard human immunoglobulin procurement.
The following day, Rambukwella was remanded until February 15 and admitted to the Prison Hospital.
The prosecution told the Maligakanda Magistrate Lochani Abeywickrama that Rambukwella had removed the suppliers registered with the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) and enabled unregistered suppliers to enter the procurement process.
The Magistrate also heard that there was no shortage of human immunoglobulin vaccine at the time when the former health minister sought Cabinet approval to make emergency purchases for a list of certain medicinal drugs.
The former health minister’s arrest came hot on the heels of pressure from civil society activists and health sector trade unionists, who have been protesting time after time against the law enforcement authorities’ failure to put him behind bars.
Prior to Rambukwella’s apprehension, seven arrests had been made in connection with the drug procurement scam.
As such, the former Health Secretary, the Director of the Health Ministry’s Medical Supplies Division (MSD) and three other officials of the same division, as well as the owner of the company, which is said to have supplied the substandard batch of immunoglobulin vials, now remain in remand.
In October 2023, the NMRA revealed that forged documents were found to have been submitted for Customs clearance to procure a batch of 22,500 vials containing human immunoglobulin, an antibody produced by blood plasma cells, which later failed the quality tests.
The product, which was said to have been manufactured by Livealth Biopharma Pvt Ltd. India and imported by a local medicine supplier called Isolez Biotech Pharma AG (Pvt) Ltd. However, the India-based manufacturer has denied having a hand in this fraudulent activity and communicated to the NMRA that it has neither manufactured, supplied nor exported these products to any party.
