Subscribe
The Karnataka Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) Department has busted a counterfeit medicine racket operating from an unlicensed unit near Bidadi in Ramanagara district, with officials seizing spurious medicines, packaging material and drug-filling equipment worth nearly Rs 5 crore, according to The Hindu.
The raid was conducted by the FSDA’s Drug Enforcement Wing and police at a farmhouse in Kurubara Karenahalli, near the Bidadi toll gate, following a tip-off about the alleged manufacture, repackaging and relabelling of medicines.
According to officials, medicines procured from manufacturing units in Himachal Pradesh and Telangana were allegedly being repackaged and labelled to make them appear to be products of prominent multinational pharmaceutical companies. The relabelled medicines were then allegedly sold at substantially higher prices.
Health Minister U T Khader said the unit did not have a valid licence to manufacture medicines and that the scale of the seizure had raised concerns about how widely counterfeit drugs may have entered the pharmaceutical supply chain.
“If in one day we get almost Rs 5 crore worth of fake drugs, I wonder how many crores worth of such fake items are already in circulation,” Khader said, according to The Times of India.
Four people have been arrested in connection with the case. Officials are investigating the ownership and operation of the unit, which was reportedly leased by R Prashanth, 36, a medical representative currently based in Dubai.
The seized stock includes injectable broad-spectrum antibiotics used to treat critically ill patients, including those suffering from serious bacterial infections, pneumonia and complicated urinary and abdominal infections. Some of the medicines are also used to treat infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria.
The presence of such drugs has raised concerns that counterfeit medicines may already have reached hospitals, pharmacies or patients across Karnataka.
The Minister said that investigators would trace the distribution network and identify whether any of the seized medicines had reached intensive care units. Authorities will also examine whether patients who may have received the drugs suffered complications or died following their administration.
He said that the accused had claimed that the operation had been running for around five months, but he questioned the claim and said the authorities would investigate whether the racket had been operating for much longer.
The Minister said he had discussed the matter with Home Minister Priyank Kharge and would speak to Chief Minister D K Shivakumar about the possibility of setting up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the suspected network.
The raid comes amid intensified surveillance by Karnataka’s FSDA of the pharmaceutical supply chain. The department has also been conducting wider inspections of pharmacies and other establishments to identify violations involving medicines and food products.
