The drug manufacturers in Rajasthan have asked the Union Health Ministry to conduct a detailed investigation to get into the real motive of the people behind the spurious drug racket that was busted in Jaipur recently. The state drug control officials had seized 13 different products of big companies worth Rs 2.3 lakh along with labels, empty bottles and manufacturing machinery used to produce the fake pharma products.
The drug manufacturers in the state suspect that there might be some other motive besides making money, such as to defame the burgeoning Indian pharma industry and trade at large and get the regulations changed in the country in favour of a particular lobby, or to kill the fast growing export business by tarnishing the image of Indian pharma industry. The Rajasthan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (RPMA) has recently met union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in this regard.
RPMA general secretary Vinod Kalani said that with the busting of the spurious drug racket in Jaipur on December 22 last year, a very surprising and a new dimension to the issue of spurious drugs seizures and exposures has come to light. “The unique modus-operandi is that the accused and his gang used to sign contracts with global companies for exposing counterfeit drugs of these companies. The accused used to charge up to Rs 1.25 lakh from each company for a police raid. They used to plant the counterfeit medicines prepared by these companies at a place and then they themselves informed the police and took them to that place. After the police recovered the drugs from the stipulated spot, the accused would send a copy of FIR to the companies and earn the contract money.”
In the Jaipur incident, a clandestine spurious drug manufacturing facility was set up by one Navneet Sharma (of M/s Cross Word Investigations, Ghaziabad, UP) at back lanes of Jaipur and they themselves informed the police and the drug control organization and got it raided and sensation was created in the state to a level that even chief minister of the state expressed his concern over the issue.
The RPMA informed the minister that the arrested five gang members have confessed to have got conducted 11 police raids in which they planted fake drugs and informed the police about it. As per the contracts, they would send FIR claiming they had busted a fake drug racket and claimed the money. The documents seized from the gang members prove that they had duped companies Rs 35.55 lakh in the last two years. For earning as much money as possible from a single raid, they used to put counterfeit drugs of many brands with which they had contracts and claim the money from all the companies.
The RPMA asked the minister for further investigations in this whole episode keeping in view the fact that such exposures and headlines defame the whole country in the international context and affect the creditability of Indian pharma industry and profession.