Solan: DCA under lens as drug firm didn’t disclose buyer details

Ambika Sharma

Solan, May 14

The working of the Drug Control Administration (DCA), Baddi, has come under the scanner as despite large-scale sale of psychotropic drugs in the last one year, the management of Biogenetic Drugs Private Limited failed to disclose details of the buyers to the authorities, violating the conditions of the grant of licence.

Company issued notice

• The company has been issued a three-day notice and told to disclose all details. Any laxity could attract cancellation of its product approval, said State Drugs Controller Manish Kapoor.
• The company management is supposed to provide details to the drug inspector, state drugs controller and the Superintendent of Police at the time the drugs are dispatched from the company premises.
• Sources say that that the company had manufactured 21.66 crore alprazolam 0.5 tablets, under various brands, since May 6, 2023

The state DCA yesterday froze raw material of psychotropic drugs found at the company premises for its failure to disclose details of the sale of such drugs in around a year.

Information on the stock of raw material as well as psychotropic drugs like alprazolam and codeine found at the premise revealed that the company had been mostly producing only these drugs. Since these drugs are mainly misused by drug abusers, their large-scale production — running into crores of tablets per year — has put a question mark over the operations of this unit, which has been operational since 2005.

Had the Punjab’s Special Task Force not exposed the sales record, it’s debatable whether the SDA would have been able to get a sniff into such suspcious activities.

The company has been issued a three-day notice to disclose its sales record, and its laxity could attract cancellation of its product approval, said State Drugs Controller Manish Kapoor.

According to the probing authorities, the company management is supposed to provide details of the quantity of drugs dispatched, address of purchaser, batch number as well as the sales amount to the drug inspector, state drugs controller and the Superintendent of Police at the time the drugs are despatched from the company premises.

Sources say that that the company had manufactured 21.66 crore alprazolam 0.5 tablets, under various brands, since May 6, 2023.

They had purchased 139 kg of alprazolam as raw material since May 2023, while 40 kg was the stock in hand. It was taken into possession by the Punjab STF under provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

Apart from this, more than 400 kg of codeine raw material was found on the premises. alprazolam tablets numbering 1.97 crore were stocked at the manufacturing unit.

“The stock of psychotropic drugs and its raw material like codeine, alprazolam, etc, found on the company premises had been frozen as long as the departmental probe is underway. The management has been issued a three-day notice to respond to the queries regarding the issues raised by the STF, apart from other violations of the non-disclosure of drug sales,” informed Manish Kapoor.