Baddi firm raided, spurious drugs seized

Tribune News Service

Ambika Sharma

Solan, September 2

A large cache of spurious drugs was recovered by the Drug Control Administration (DCA) from the premises of Arya Pharma at Dharampur village in Baddi last evening. The firm was manufacturing allopathic drugs illegally despite having a licence for nutraceuticals. Nutraceutical is a combination of nutrition and pharmaceutical and refers to a food product that provides health benefits. It covers eight categories of functional foods.

Quantity recovered

• 25,485 Bio D3Plus capsules of Mecleods Pharma
• 5,310 Bio D3Max capsules of Mecleods Pharma
• 448 gm loose capsules of sarten DSR of Park Pharma
• 3,080 orthrorium MSM tablets of LV Lifesciences,
• 31 cartons of Bio D3Plus capsules of Mecleods Pharma
• 20 cartons of orthrorium MSM tablets of LV Lifesciences

No drugs licence

The firm has food licence issued by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and has no licence to manufacture drugs — Navneet Marwaha, state drugs controller

“A team of drugs inspectors (DIs) had been monitoring the activities of the firm for the last 15 days,” said State Drugs Controller Navneet Marwaha.

Drugs Inspector Harish Kumar followed a car (HR 41 L 9992) which came out of the firm last evening. When intercepted at Barotiwala, about 47,000 capsules of sarten DSR, manufactured by Park Pharmaceuticals, Kalujhinda village in Baddi, were recovered.

The State Drugs Controller constituted two teams comprising DIs Rajat, Harish and Promila and DIs Anoop, Lovely and Akshay.

The first team seized the drugs from the car driven by Vikrant, who failed to produce any papers in support.

Police assistance was also taken. The second team raided the firm where the owner was not present and didn’t turn up despite being informed. A search was conducted in the presence of 3-4 workers.

“The firm is holding food licence issued by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and has no drugs manufacturing licence,” said Marwaha.

Six types of allopathic drugs were recovered which comprised 25,485 Bio D3Plus capsules of Mecleods Pharma, 5,310 Bio D3Max capsules of Mecleods Pharma, loose capsules of sarten DSR in a polybag of Park Pharma, weighing 448 gm, 3,080 orthrorium MSM tablets of LV Lifesciences, 31 cartons of Bio D3Plus capsules of Mecleods Pharma and 20 cartons of orthrorium MSM tablets of LV Lifesciences.

Arun Chauhan, Assistant Commissioner, FSSAI, Solan, said the firm had a licence to manufacture nutraceuticals since 2016. Since nutraceutical licences were issued by the Ghaziabad-based FSSAI after March 31, they had no authority to monitor such firms.

Chauhan added that information pertaining to seizure of allopathic drugs had been sent to the FSSAI.

Since all three drug firms are located at Baddi, their representatives were called for identification of the drugs by raiding teams. These drugs were identified as spurious. Their samples were drawn for lab analysis and the premises was sealed.

A case under manufacturing of spurious drugs for sale, manufacturing drugs without licence, etc, has been registered under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act by the DCA.

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