The Maharashtra police have initiated an enquiry into the possible links of a recently unearthed spurious drug racket in Gujarat with a few cases related to spurious drugs seized in the state a few years ago.

Police from Mumbai will soon bring Kalpana Pandia, director of K P Healthcare at GIDC - Kerala at Gota near Ahmedabad to Mumbai for further investigations in this connection, Dr. S P Adeshera, Commissioner, Gujarat Food and Drugs Control Administration (FDA) told Pharmabiz. Though the Maharashtra police had registered some cases related to spurious drugs a few years ago, the investigating authorities were unable to unearth the origin of those drugs.

At present the accused is lodged in Sabarmati Jail, Ahmedabad, following the lower courts and the Gujarat High Court rejected her bail applications. A total of seven accused are in judicial custody related to the case, registered during the first week of January, this year.

In this largest ever-spurious drug haul in Gujarat, drugs and machinery worth Rs 48 lakh were seized and four persons, Alpesh Seni, Raju Desai, Mansukh Goswami and his son Manoj were arrested in this connection. The drugs were manufactured at KP Healthcare at Gota near Ahmedabad, a seven-year-old company, which was asked to close down by FDA for not complying with Schedule M norms. The other culprits were selling drugs in north India by duping the labels of leading pharma companies like Torrent, Sun Pharma, Aventis, Novartis, GSK, Pfizer etc. and were selling the drugs in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and many other parts of north and north east India.

Mansukh Goswami and his son manufactured life saving drugs like alprex and setzin tablets of reputed companies at his facility. Packing material, stickers and labels were being supplied by Raju Desai. Police recovered various spurious drugs, blister-packing machine and tablet strip machine worth Rs 44.98 lakh from the manufacturers.