Fake pill’s mountain trail

Counterfeit drugs recovered from Bhagirath Place leads to manufacturing unit in Himachal; large cache of spurious medicines recovered

Fake pill's mountain trail

Counterfeit drugs recovered from Bhagirath Place leads to manufacturing unit in Himachal; large cache of spurious medicines recovered

When a strip of counterfeit antibiotic drugs was recovered from one of the many shops cramming Bhagirath Place in Old Delhi about a month ago, not many guessed it was just the tip of an iceberg.

The drugs and packaging material recovered from the site

A team, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Raman Sharma of the area, seized around 13,000 duplicate Zithromax tablets and two aluminum foil rolls in which around 23,000 tablets were ready to be packed.

Zithromax is an antibiotic medicine manufactured by a reputed pharmaceutical company.

"We had received a complaint from a particular company that their medicines were being produced illegally at the factory. We raided the premises on Saturday evening and recovered huge quantities of fake medicines. The people running the laboratory are based in Gurgaon, Haryana. We will be sending our teams to arrest them," said DSP Sharma from the Himachal Pradesh police.

According to Dhirendra Singh, spokesperson and one of the main investigating officers of EIPR, the agency had received complaints from one of their clients regarding counterfeiting of their medicines.

Singh said that around 40 days ago, some of the counterfeit medicines of the company were found at shops in Old Delhi after which the agency investigated and found the source was Himachal Pradesh.u00a0 "We coordinated with the police and raided the place. The laboratory was sending duplicate medicines to Delhi, Punjab and parts of Uttar Pradesh. The laboratory has on its website claimed to produce medicines for ten different companies.

We were authorised to investigate for only one company and in the process recovered the duplicate medicines of the company in huge company," said Singh.

Caught in the act
The police have registered a case (FIR No 331/09) at the Una (Sadar) police station under Sections 63 of the Copyright Act and 420 of the Indian Penal Code.

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