Karnataka Drugs Control department has now confirmed that the large pharma companies have denied that the haul of 63 drugs seized from drug traders in the state in early May was not manufactured by them, but are spurious versions in the market.

The state drugs controller has now made concerted efforts to ensure prosecution of the wholesaler Satish Sharma who did not posses a drug license and the 9 chemists in the state who sold the drugs without prescription and failed to keep a record of its sales.

The violators will face action within a month. The drugs supplier Satish Sharma who was released on bail is now undergoing trial and efforts are to seek the information about the location of production of the drugs which belonged to leading multinational companies and large pharma companies including Pfizer, Ranbaxy, Torrent, Cipla, Zydus Cadila, Nicholas Piramal, Restech Pharma in Ahmedabad, Emcure Pharma in Pune, Instacare in Vadodara, Wockhardt in Daman, Hagel Capsules in Daman, Alkem Labs in Mumbai, Kare Labs in Goa, Meditab Specialities in Goa and FDC Goa.

Ramakrishna Gandhi, Karnataka Drugs Controller stated, “ We have informed wholesalers, retailers, doctors and medical centres across the state both in the government and private sector not to sell or stock the 63 drugs which includes Voveran SR, Zental, Cetzine, Stemetil, Registrone, Perinorm, Ciplox 500 mg, Norflox TZ, Eption, Alprax etc, under the segments of antibiotics, epileptic, anti inflammatory, antibacterial, neuropsychiatry, cardiovasculars, etc.”

The drugs were seized during a regular raid by a team led by H Srinivas, assistant drugs controller, Bangalore Circle I. The team of drug inspectors found that the drug samples were found to be faulty in terms of packaging, batch No, tablet size, physical and chemical properties where quantity and quality of content was faulty, deceptive colours of drugs, wrong license number, spelling errors in the brand name, poor quality of aluminium foils, incorrect details on the carton and mismatch of details on the strips, explained H Srinivas assistant drugs controller, Bangalore Circle I.

All the drugs were tested at the government analytical lab situated in the Drugs Control department.

The drugs inspectors also visited the pharmaceutical companies in person to ascertain whether the range of drugs belongs to them and if it was manufactured at their premises.  The companies categorically denied the production and proved it by showing the samples produced that their facilities. This helped the drugs control department to speed up the investigations and produce the details to accelerate the prosecution.