Spurious hypertension tablets seized from Gurugram medical stores last week were manufactured at a unit in Uttarakhand’s Roorkee, officials at Haryana’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Monday.
Event Context
Raids were subsequently carried out at a wholesale firm in Delhi’s Okhla that allegedly supplied the spurious Telmisartan 40 mg and Amlodipine 5 mg tablets to medical stores, leading to the arrest of two persons.
The two suspects told the interrogators that they procured the drugs from a manufacturer in Roorkee. “The tablets and strips were later routed through Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh to finally ensure retail supplies at medical stores in the National Capital Region (NCR), particularly in Gurugram and Delhi,” a senior Haryana FDA official said, requesting anonymity.
Match Outlook
The official added that the FDA has identified the suspected manufacturing unit. “More arrests are likely to take place soon. For further investigations, we will be pressing for a police remand in the arrest of the latest accused from Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad on Sunday,” he said.
Officials believe the manufacturing unit was also making other spurious drugs. Officials said the paper trail had earlier identified an Okhla-based wholesale firm which had supplied spurious medicine.
Officials said the drugs were falsely labelled to have been made by a Mumbai-headquartered pharmaceutical firm at its facility in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh. The firm told the authorities that the drugs were spurious and not manufactured by them.
FDA officials said they started investigating the case on July 16 after receiving a tip about the sale of spurious hypertension drugs at medical stores in Gurugram.
Following this, drug controller officers in Gurugram procured record bills of medical sales from the respective stores and raided the wholesale firm in Delhi’s Okhla, leading to the arrest. A case under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act has been filed.
