SOLAN (Himachal Pradesh), Nov 24: Three persons were arrested on Tuesday night
following seizure of fake drugs of branded pharmaceuticals from a godown in
Baddi industrial area of Solan in Himachal Pradesh where it was being made.
The drugs were seized by the Drug Control Administration (DCA) officials from
a vehicle at the border and the factory was subsequently raided.
A case under Section 18 A1 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act has been registered
against the accused who have been identified as Mohit Bansal of Agra, who owns
a drug business, Atul Gupta of Auraiya in UP and Vijay Kaushal of Indore. They
were produced before a local court which remanded them in four-day custody on
Wednesday.
The fake drugs were being manufactured at Sarah Enterprises in the DIC Industrial
Area and sold through their Agra shop. The shop in Agra belonging to Bansal
was raided and the stocks seized.
“A godown located in Baddi was raided and fake drugs valued at more than Rs
1 crore were seized. The medicines were manufactured under the name of renowned
companies like Ipca Laboratories, USV Pvt Ltd, Cipla, Cadila, Macleods Pharmaceuticals,
Signova Pharma, among others,” State Drugs Controller Navneet Marwaha, told
Tribune.
Rs 8 cr-cancer medicines seized: Meanwhile, seven people, including
an MBBS doctor and owner of a pharmaceutical factory, were arrested by the crime
branch of the Delhi police for allegedly manufacturing spurious medicines and
supplying them in India, China, Bangladesh and Nepal as genuine life-saving
cancer medicines. Twenty international brands of cancer medicines worth over
Rs 8 cr were seized from the arrested persons, HT reported.
Last September also spurious drugs were seized in a raid in the same industrial
area in Solan where 650 pharmaceutical factories are located and 54,000 spurious capsules
and 3,000 tablets were seized. Several illicit factories had been unearthed
elsewhere in the State too in the past. Most of India's pharmaceutical factories
are in Himachal Pradesh, numbering 1,500.
Damage from substandard and fake drugs: The damage done at the population
level by substandard and fake drugs is irreversible. These substances not only
compromise the treatment of various diseases leading to their progression, but
also cause drug resistance and death. Those ingested such fakes usually face
kidney and liver damage. Large number of cases have come to light where Chinese
and Indian fakes have not only done damage to their own populations but also
to countries like Nigeria, Gambia and others in Africa, Panama in South America
and Indonesia in South-east Asia.
Most recent is the case of Gambia where 66 children died of kidney failure
due to consumption of fake cough drugs imported from the State of Haryana in
India. Diethylene glycol and chromium were the main culprits in most cases in
the last few years. Diabetes medicines glibenclamide and metformin have also
raised quality concerns in several countries. Benign ingredients like chalk,
flour etc are also used instead of medicinal chemicals in which case the death
is caused by the progression of the disease only and the adulteration goes undetected.
A recent survey across countries found half of antibiotics sampled were substandard.
There is no inbuilt system for the clinicians to suspect the quality of drugs
when they fail. The cost that the fakes inflict is very heavy at multiple levels.
