Maharashtra: Man from UP held over fake medicine racket busted in Nagpur district

Representative Image. File Photo

Police from Nagpur district in Maharashtra have arrested a man from Uttar Pradesh in connection with a fake medicine racket busted in March 2023, an official told PTI on Sunday.

Reportedly, a team from Kalmeshwar police station in Nagpur district recently took Raman Vijayakumar Taneja into custody from UP's Saharanpur, he said.

In March 2023, the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reportedly picked samples of 'ciprofloxacin' tablets from a state-run healthcare facility in Kalmeshwar tehsil, about 40 km from Nagpur, and sent them to a government lab in Mumbai for testing.

As per the PTI report, the test report, which came in December 2023, showed that the tablets had no medicinal value as they had no trace of ciprofloxacin, which is prescribed to treat a number of bacterial infections, police said.

Since the drugs were reportedly provided by the Indira Gandhi Government Medical College and Hospital based in Nagpur, FDA agents searched the hospital store early this year and seized 21,600 tablets of the same brand.

According to the news agency report, police said the tablet strips showed that they were manufactured by a Gujarat-based company, which didn't even exist.

Initial arrests included prime suspect from Thane, Vijay Shailendra Choudhary, Hemant Dhondiba Mule from Latur, and Mihir Trivedi, a resident of Bhiwandi.

During the investigation, Taneja's name cropped up, the official said, adding that Choudhary was also arrested recently, as reported by PTI.

Meanwhile, in a tragic accident on the Samruddhi Highway, seven people died and four others were injured late Friday night. According to the highway police, a car traveling on the wrong side of the road collided with an SUV heading towards Mumbai. The incident occurred after one of the cars had stopped to refuel.

One of the injured was speaking to his wife when the head-on collision happened. Three of the seven deceased are residents of Malad. The injured were immediately given first aid in the district hospital, Jalna, and were then moved to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.

All seven bodies have been brought to Mumbai for a post-mortem.

(with inputs from PTI)