Following Gujarat Food and Drug Administration (FDCA) crack down on two Ahmedabad based wholesalers SR Enterprises and Shraddha Healthcare for marketing spurious drugs as a part of huge inter-state drug racket, High Court of Gujarat has rejected the bail plea of of the accused.
The racket had spread its network spanning Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra which got detected when the state regulators seized antibiotics worth over Rs.51 lakh in Ahmedabad alone. At the time of seizure on December 20, FIRs were filed against two Ahmedabad based wholesalers as a part of the crackdown led by Commissioner FDCA Dr H G Koshia.
Dr Koshia explained, “The accused have been arrested and are behind bars and the court has outrightly rejected their bail plea. Baroda based drug testing lab has come out with results that antibiotics were grossly spurious with no active ingredients.”
Dr Koshia added that a racket of this magnitude has been detected for the first time in Gujarat and the state regulator is in constant touch with drug controllers of other states to follow other vital leads in the case.
Based on a tip-off that these drugs have been supplied in a clandestine manner to Ahmedabad and other areas, Gujarat FDCA officials laid a trap and detected 8 products giving negative results through hand held near infra-red machine and Raman spectroscopy machine. The seized products claimed to be antibiotics like cefixime, azithromycin and ofloxacin were priced at over Rs.200 for each strip of 10 tablets.
A similar kind of racket of non-surgical abortion medication spanning across Gujarat and Delhi was also unearthed by Maharashtra FDA team two years ago. Drugs worth over Rs.3 lakh were confiscated during the raid. The accused were found contravening the provisions of the law under different sections of Essential Commodities (EC) Act and Drugs and Cosmetics Act (D&C Act).