Rangila Surrenders as Delhi Hospitals Buy Supplies Directly

Delhi’s Anti-Corruption Branch arrested pharmaceutical distributor Rajiv Rangila on 24 September after he flew in from the United States and surrendered. He is the fourth person held in the government-hospital supply case, and a city court sent him into four days of ACB custody.

Officials call him the prime beneficiary of crime proceeds amounting to nearly ₹750 crore. By the day he walked in, the Central Procurement Agency had already been told to stop buying for hospitals.

Rangila Surrendered Hours After Landing From the US

Rangila, 47, a resident of east Delhi’s Priyadarshini Vihar, had been declared a proclaimed offender, and a look-out circular was in force. He left the country after the FIR of 2 June, following anticipatory bail on 30 June in a separate extortion case, and came back on an early flight on 24 September.

He surrendered to the ACB the same day rather than being taken off the aircraft. Investigators had been searching Delhi-NCR and Uttarakhand after he missed summons, and wanted notices had gone up on the Priyadarshini Vihar house.

ACB chief Vikramjit Singh had already named him as an accused and said multiple teams were looking. Public prosecutor Kumar Sanjay told a court in August that Rangila was not a manufacturer and so was not entitled to join tenders that required one. Rouse Avenue Court rejected his anticipatory bail on 25 August and said custodial questioning was needed.

The ACB had filed a charge-sheet about a week before he landed. Officials said they were preparing to move against his properties in the first week of October. He has, they said, been a hospital contractor and pharmaceutical distributor for more than 25 years, with holdings in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Haryana, and he lost the 2014 Haryana Assembly poll as an independent from Karnal, finishing fifth on 12,830 votes, or 9.13 per cent.

The Vigilance Complaint Named Five Front Firms

An ACB official said Rangila formed four companies whose listed owners were people known to him, including employees, and that those companies won the supply contracts after basic norms were skipped. The Directorate of Vigilance complaint that started the case names five firms and says he was the actual operator even though other people sat on the papers.

FIRMS LISTED IN THE VIGILANCE COMPLAINT

• F Med Devices: Named as a Rangila-controlled supplier; the ACB later told a court this firm billed for portable X-ray units.
• Technocrats: Listed among the firms created with other people registered as owners.
• Raj Shree: Named in the same Vigilance list as a vehicle for the tenders.
• Ashi Surgical and Pharmaceuticals: Named as another firm on the complaint’s list.
• M Sahib and Sons Pvt. Ltd.: The fifth firm named, with Rangila described as the real operator.

Investigators have alleged that the names on some of those papers included his servants and tea vendors. The Vigilance complaint says the firms were projected as authorised distributors of pre-chosen manufacturers. Restrictive specifications were drafted with those manufacturers, officials said, then sent to Dr Vinod Kumar Ranga, then head of office at the CPA, who put them before the tender committee.

Fake companies then billed the CPA, and payments went out in one or two days, officials alleged. Rangila is described as the link between the supplier firms and officers in the Directorate General of Health Services and the CPA.

What Those 448 X-ray Units Were Billed At

The FIR covers portable X-ray and C-Arm radiological equipment, anaesthesia workstations, oral rehydration solution, surgical consumables, medicines, bedsheets and linen. The clearest specimen the ACB has put in court is a single F Med Devices deal.

RATES THE ACB CITED

The June 2 FIR is under the Prevention of Corruption Act and criminal conspiracy in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. For a private person accused of taking an undue advantage to influence a public servant, the Act sets three to seven years in prison and a fine. The Enforcement Directorate has opened a separate money-laundering file and asked the health department for CPA and DGHS buying records.

Three Health Officials Were Already Under Arrest

The Vigilance directorate searched the CPA office over two nights in May after complaints about tenders, then sent a complaint to the ACB. Dr Vatsala Aggarwal was removed as director-general of health services on 21 May, posted to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, and later suspended on the Lieutenant Governor’s direction.

FROM THE MAY RAIDS TO THE SURRENDER

1. May 2026: Vigilance searches the CPA office over two nights and files a complaint on buying of medicines, surgical items and equipment.
2. 2 June 2026: The ACB registers the FIR under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
3. 18 June 2026: Dr Vinod Kumar Ranga, former CPA head of office, is arrested and sent into four days of police custody.
4. 27 June 2026: Dr Vatsala Aggarwal and Neeraj Chopra, then deputy controller of accounts at the CPA, are arrested after, officials said, they failed to give satisfactory explanations; several spending and buying files were missing.
5. 30 June 2026: Rangila gets anticipatory bail in a separate extortion case and, officials said, leaves India soon after.
6. 6 August 2026: The health department freezes CPA buying, cancels unfinished tenders, and tells hospitals to purchase directly.
7. 25 August 2026: Rouse Avenue Court rejects Rangila’s anticipatory bail in the supply case.
8. 24 September 2026: He lands from the United States, surrenders, and is arrested; a court grants four days of ACB custody.

Singh, the ACB chief, said public servants and private persons had manipulated buying processes, tender conditions and technical specifications to favour selected firms.

It was alleged that certain public servants and private persons manipulated procurement processes, tender conditions, and technical specifications to provide undue advantage to selected firms and suppliers, causing loss to the government exchequer and corresponding wrongful gain to private persons.

Vikramjit Singh, ACB chief, Delhi

Chief Minister Rekha Gupta’s government had already moved staff at the CPA in early June, transferring 10 doctors, 19 paramedical workers and 10 administrative employees, and bringing in 12 medical officers. On 28 June it suspended seven officials, including five pharmacists, after a stores inquiry. More than 1.27 lakh vials of anti-rabies vaccine had sat undelivered because a warehouse lacked cold storage, according to the Chief Minister’s Office and a supplier letter.

Delhi Put the Central Buying Desk on Hold

The CPA, set up in 1994, was the nodal buyer of medicines, vaccines, consumables and equipment for Delhi government hospitals, Ayushman Arogya Mandirs and dispensaries. Government orders in June 2025 had pushed that work further into one channel. The August order said that shift was a policy call that should have gone to the Council of Ministers under the Transaction of Business Rules, and it arrived after Health Minister Pankaj Kumar Singh sought a report on firms accused of sending substandard material and issued a show-cause notice to the health secretary over a missing action plan.

WHAT THE AUGUST 6 ORDER DID

• Unfinished tenders: All pending, incomplete and in-process CPA tenders that were not finalised stand cancelled and go back to the hospitals.
• CPA desk: Buying through the agency is on hold, except for essential drugs until new rate contracts are signed.
• Hospital heads: Medicines, including items on and off the Essential Drug List, consumables, surgical items and equipment are to be bought by hospital heads of department.
• Live contracts: Existing rate contracts continue until they expire or are ended, but they are to be reviewed for illegality and procedural lapses.

Hospitals were told to follow the General Financial Rules for government buying, GeM rules and other norms until a new legal, financial, administrative and digital frame for central buying is in place. Delhi’s finance department already hosts Delhi’s own GeM handbook for buyers on its circulars page, which is now the paperwork ward stores have to work with.

Damp Linen and Cold-Chain Failures at the Store

The freeze stopped a captured desk. It also stopped the pipe that kept public hospitals stocked. Doctors and hospital officials said antibiotics, injections, saline, gloves, cotton and bandages have at times been unavailable, so wards borrowed from other departments, used substitutes, or asked patients to buy from private pharmacies. Local purchase cannot replace a central rate contract, and it often costs more.

A senior doctor at a Delhi government hospital said his department could not get consumables and equipment despite repeated indents. “Because of the investigation around the scam, everything has halted and no work is happening: no procurement of equipment, consumables. Some medicines have arrived but only for a short duration and then medicines will be procured at a higher rate under local purchase,” he said.

Supplies already bought through tenders are under watch in poorly kept stores. A DGHS inventory committee at the Central Drug Store told the directorate it could not count stock with any accuracy. In a letter, Chief District Medical Officer (East) Dr Sandeep Gautam said physical verification was “extremely difficult.” Linen, a large share of the pile, was in “highly disorganised, mixed, damp and dust-laden conditions,” without segregation, coding or stacking, so the committee called it “practically impossible” to identify, classify and count. Medicines that needed cold storage were found at room temperature, inside and outside the main store.

A senior health-department official said the warehouse was damp and that rain had ruined boxes of expensive medicines, which would also hit quality. The same freeze that cut off a rigged tender path has left purchased stock at risk on the shelf.

Paid Tenders Still Show as Live on GeM

The Vigilance complaint said several tenders that had already been awarded and fully paid still appeared on the Government e-Marketplace as “active,” “under process,” or stuck at financial bid evaluation. That mismatch is now evidence, because even if paper files at the CPA went missing, GeM logs and copies held by other bidders remain to be matched against invoices that cleared in one or two days. Hospital buyers are being pointed back to the mandatory GeM route under Rule 149 while those stale listings are still on the portal.

Rangila’s return does not restart the CPA. It puts the alleged operator of the paper firms in a lock-up for four days, with a charge-sheet already on the court’s table and a property action that officials had timed for the first week of October. The registered owners of F Med Devices, Technocrats, Raj Shree, Ashi Surgical and Pharmaceuticals, and M Sahib and Sons are still part of that file. So are the rival bids, the GeM status flags, and the unpaid question of how much of the bought stock in the damp store can still be used.

Wanted notices were already on the Priyadarshini Vihar house when he stepped off the flight. He walked into the ACB the same morning, and the court gave the agency four days to ask him about the companies, the 448 X-ray units, and the payments that went out in a day or two.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of an ongoing criminal investigation and related hospital-supply orders. It is for information only and is not legal, medical, or procurement advice. Allegations against Rajiv Rangila and others remain unproven in court unless and until a court records a conviction, and readers should not treat named firms, prices, or custody terms as findings of guilt. Anyone with a legal interest in the case should consult a qualified criminal lawyer, and hospitals and suppliers should take advice from their own finance and procurement officers before acting on the August order or on GeM and GFR rules. Figures, custody status, and administrative directions reflect the official and court accounts available on 26 September 2026 and may change as the probe, the charge-sheet, and hospital buying rules move.