As a part of its ongoing crackdown on spurious drug racket spread across Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra, Gujarat Food and Drug Administration (FDCA) has detected 50 drug retail stores in Ahmedabad which were supplied fake/ spurious drugs by a drug dealer based in Delhi.

These spurious drugs were marketed under the names of fictitious companies, as per the investigations taken up by all the state drug controllers where the racket has been detected.

Practicing doctors were found prescribing spurious antibiotics kept in these retail drug stores. The modus operandi of the drug dealer was such that invoices were raised by licensed wholesalers and supplied to retailers and doctors with a huge margin the cost of which was passed on to the gullible patients.

Madhya Pradesh state drug regulator informed that the products were supplied through a Delhi based trader - Shakti Traders with invoice being raised by a drug wholesaler in Gwalior.

Meanwhile, Gujarat FDCA has filed FIRs and canceled licenses of two Ahmedabad based wholesalers SR Enterprises and Shraddha Healthcare for marketing spurious drugs as a part of their involvement in the inter-state drug racket subsequent to state regulator’s seizure of antibiotics worth over Rs. 51 Lakh in Ahmedabad recently led by Commissioner FDCA Dr H G Koshia.

Vadodara based drug testing lab in its test report concluded that antibiotics were grossly spurious with no active ingredients.

Dr Koshia has remarked 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 nab the master mind of the racket.  

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 by using hand held 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 spanning across Gujarat and Delhi was also unearthed by Maharashtra FDA team two years ago. Over 400 strips of non-surgical abortion medication worth over Rs. 3 lakh were confiscated during the raid from a Mumbai based dealer and two medical representatives who supplied him the pills. 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).