The Gujarat police have busted a gang selling illicit injections administered to critical COVID-19 patients and booked five persons for allegedly manufacturing and distributing spurious tocilizumab injections, which are in short supply and are used on critically infected patients.
The gang was busted after the Food and Drugs Control Administration arrested people running a fake pharma company in Surat.
According to police, the racket was operational in Surat and Ahmedabad. The accused were identified as Ashish Shah, Akshay Shah, Harsh Thakor, Nilesh Laliwala and Sohel Tai, the alleged mastermind.
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Tai owns Genic Pharma, a fake company based in Surat.
The accused used to supply the illicit tocilizumab (Actmera) injections to Ahmedabad.
The FIR has been lodged at Vastrapur police station in Ahmedabad against the five.
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“While two persons [Thakor and Laliwala] have been detained, investigation is under way,” said Inspector YB Jadeja.
All the five accused have been booked under Sections 308 (doing act knowing that it could make him guilty of culpable homicide in case it causes death), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 276 (sale of drug as a different drug or prescription), and 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, Inspector Jadeja told media persons.
Additionally, Sections 18 (c) (selling drug without valid licence) and 27 (manufacture and sale of spurious or adulterated drug) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act have been invoked.
As per the FIR lodged by the police, the accused had hatched a conspiracy to make fast money by producing a spurious medicine called Nandrolone Decanoate under the aegis of the bogus company.
They would change the name of the spurious drug and sell it as tocilizumab injection.
“If injected, the medicine could cause death,” the officer said quoting the FIR.
The complaint was lodged by FDCA drug inspector Tapan Chudasama.
The racket was exposed after a doctor of a private company alerted the FDCA about it.
The doctor had received a box of spurious tocilizumab injections from a relative of a COVID-19 patient whom he had prescribed the medicine.
During probe, the FDCA found that the medicine was purchased from Dinesh Shah who runs a pharmacy in Ahmedabad without a receipt.
Shah was given the injection by his brother Ashish Shah, the FDCA had said.
The probe led officials to Harsh Thakor, Nilesh Laliwala and finally to Tai, who became accused after their role emerged in the racket.