Sonepat's Maiden Pharmaceutical Limited in dock earlier too
Mukesh Tandon
Sonepat, October 10
It is not the first time that Maiden Pharmaceutical Limited, a drugs and medicine manufacturing company in HSIIDC Kundli, has come into light due to substandard drugs.
Habitual ‘offender’
- Bihar Govt had blacklisted Maiden Pharmaceuticals for supplying substandard medicines in 2011 after methylergometrine tablet was found spurious
- Another syrup erythromycin stearate was also found to be of unsatisfactory quality
- The firm was fined by a court in Kerala in 2017, while five more samples of medicines were found of substandard quality in Kerala from 2021-22
- J&K Govt has also warned against the company after a sample of cyproheptadine hydrochloride syrup IP was found substandard.
- Vietnam Govt had blacklisted the company for supplying substandard medicines
Earlier, the Vietnam government had blacklisted the company for supplying substandard medicines there.
A drug inspector of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) North Zone, Ghaziabad, had filed a case against Maiden Pharmaceuticals for supplying substandard medicines to Vietnam in a Sonepat court in 2017, after a sample of ranitidine hydrochloride tablet (Mantac-150) had failed the laboratory test.
Its director Naresh Kumar Goel and MK Sharma, technical director, was facing trial in a Sonepat court. The next hearing in the case is on October 28.
The drug inspector of CDSCO, in his complaint filed in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Sonepat, said he, along with the drug control officer of state drug control authority, jointly visited the Maiden Pharmaceutical’s premises on March 13, 2014, to investigate the matter regarding the export of medical products from India to Vietnam, which had been manufactured by the company.
They collected a sample of ranitidine hydrochloride tablet BP (Mantac 150) on which the date of manufacturing was 4/2013 and the expiry date 3/2016 was mentioned in the presence of MK Sharma, technical director of the company.
The sample was sent to Regional Drugs Testing Laboratory in Chandigarh for analysis on March 18, 2014. The laboratory declared that the sample was not of standard quality. After that, the drug inspector issued a show-cause notice to the company under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act on September 1, 2014, but didn’t get appropriate reply by the company.
After that, the drug inspector filed a case against Maiden Pharmaceuticals director Naresh Kumar Goel and MK Sharma, technical director of the company under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act in 2017.
