Hyderabad: Counterfeit drugs worth Rs 4.35 cr seized

Hyderabad: A team of vigilance cell of the Drug Control Administration (DCA) Telangana on Tuesday seized huge spurious/counterfeit drugs worth Rs 4.35 crore from an unlicensed warehouse run by a firm ‘Astrica Healthcare’ at Macha Bollaram.

Director-general TSDCA V B Kamalasan Reddy termed the seizure of anti-cancer drugs a major breakthrough and biggest in the State. Raids on the warehouse were conducted on Monday by DCA officials including assistant directors P Ramu and V Balanaganjan and drug inspectors K Muralikrishna, B Praveen, G Srikanth, N Ravikiran Reddy and A N Kranthi Kumar, who seized 36 varieties of drugs.

Certain seized drugs were found to be spurious as labels bear details of a non-existent company ‘Astra Generics Pvt. Ltd.’ whose licence had already been cancelled in July 2022, but the manufacturing date mentioned on the seized drugs was March 2023 in the name of the cancelled company.

The drugs bear names of nine companies, including Astra Generics Pvt. Ltd., Telangana, Astrica Healthcare Pvt. Ltd., Medion Biotech Pvt. Ltd., Himachal Pradesh, Alliance Biotech, HP, Sunvet Healthcare, HP, Salus Pharmaceuticals, HP, DM Pharma Pvt. Ltd, HP, Safe Parenterals Pvt. Ltd., Andhra Pradesh, Bless Pharma India Pvt. Ltd., Telangana.

On receiving credible information about Astrica Healthcare, a special team led by Ramu and Srikanth, Dis K Anvesh, M Chandrasekhar, V Ajay and S Vinay Sushmi had conducted raids at various locations in the city on December 2.

The DCA officials took assistance of the postal authorities at Alwal to trace the location mentioned on the invoices gathered by the DCA. Upon inquiry it was found to be fake. The special team then carried out raids at courier offices used by Astrica Healthcare for shipping the drug consignments.

The DCA officials split into two teams; one raided the courier offices at IDA Cherlapally, Nacharam and Medchal; the other raided the premises of ‘Astrica Healthcare’ at Keesara.

The DCA officials identified the courier boy who was delivering the drug stock and traced the location of the drugs that were stocked in three shutters at Macha Bollaram.

The prime accused, K Sateesh Reddy, director, Astrica Healthcare, is absconding. Efforts are on to trace him to take legal action.