As part of its ongoing crackdown on spurious drugs, the Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) is planning to investigate circulation of spurious drugs marketed under the names of fictitious companies.
This is the fallout of latest findings by other state drug controllers where the network of unscrupulous drug dealers have currently spread to states like Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.
In the backdrop of detection of spurious drugs recently through some exporting firms, Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also investigating the matter further to their correspondence with Gujarat FDCA on the inter-state spurious drug racket.
Maharashtra FDA Commissioner Dr Harshdeep Kamble has also termed spurious drugs as a major challenge and is devising an action plan to plug the loopholes in the retail supply chain. There have been reports of mislabeling of drugs which in the first place makes it spurious, he remarked saying certain drug exporting firms have come under the scanner based on intelligence reports.
Based on the investigations from respective state drug controllers where the menace of spurious drugs have spread, the clandestine activity involved supplying these products through a Delhi based trader which used to raise invoice from a drug wholesaler operating from elsewhere.
As part of the operation, 50 drug retail stores in Ahmedabad were also supplied fake/ spurious drugs by the drug dealer and two people have been nabbed by the FDA and police in this connection. Practicing doctors were found prescribing spurious antibiotics kept in these retail drug stores.
Madhya Pradesh state drug regulator informed that the products were supplied through a Delhi based trader with invoice being raised by a drug wholesaler in Gwalior. Vadodara based drug testing lab in its test report concluded that antibiotics were grossly spurious with no active ingredients.
Dr Koshia has also found 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 on the matter.
Based on the latest intelligence reports, spurious drugs used to be supplied in a clandestine manner through certain areas in Gujarat including Ahmedabad. This is further to Gujarat FDCA detecting 8 such products worth Rs. 51 lakhs giving negative results on lab testing. The seized products claimed to be antibiotics were also sold at exorbitant prices of over Rs. 200 for each strip of 10 tablets.
A similar kind of racket spanning across Gujarat and Delhi contravening the provisions of sections of Essential Commodities (EC) Act and Drugs and Cosmetics Act (D&C Act) was also unearthed by Maharashtra FDA team two years ago. Over 400 strips of non-surgical abortion medication were confiscated during the raid from a Mumbai based dealer and two medical representatives who supplied him the pills.