An Agra-based pharmaceutical company called “Golu Pharma” in Uttar Pradesh had been raided by Mumbai police. Mumbai police raided Golu Pharma, as it supplied fake drugs called Orofer ferric carboxymaltose (FCM) to Mumbai. Golu Pharma also supplied these fake drugs to a Delhi-based pharmaceutical firm called Kanha Pharma.
According to an article from Semantic Scholar, ferric carboxymaltose is an injection given to patients with iron deficiency anemia.
The Mumbai Police team, along with Drug Inspector Kapil Sharma, raided the entire pharmaceutical firm and confiscated the company’s records of sold drugs and drug samples of some medicines. They also checked the company documents, but they did not find anything suspicious.
Atul Upadhyay, assistant commissioner of police, said that his team had seized all the injections from the company, and the police officers had found bills for eight types of medicines purchased, but they did not find any bills for sold items. They also found that many drugs were not sold until the day and questioned the owner of the pharma company to know the reason.
Sanjay Singh, the owner of the Golu Pharma company, said that only two injections of Orofer FCM were sold to Kanha Pharma, the Delhi-based firm, and he also said that he doesn’t have any more stock of Orofer FCM in his company. His company got its license in 2021.
This is not the first incident to happen in Agra. Previously, many pharmaceutical companies in the city have been raided by a team of Mumbai police, resulting in the seizure of narcotic medicines worth Rs 250 crore over the last five years.
Many pharmaceutical companies in the city have been raided because surgical equipment has been supplied to 11 states—Delhi, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Haryana, and Jharkhand—as well as to other countries, including Bangladesh.
Vijay Upadhyay, a social activist, stated that the Food and Drug Administration should survey the manufacturing and storage facilities of the pharma companies that have obtained licenses to check the quality of drugs being produced and sold.
Reference:
1) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Hypophosphatemia-after-High-Dosage-Iron-with-Ferric-Emrich-Lizzi/2ea0667a5ade97a8f37492cb6a353cb738f58d52
(Input from various media sources)
(Rehash/Rohini Devi)