Man held for exporting spurious drugs

A 44-year-old man has been arrested for exporting fake medicines to foreign countries like the US, Britain and Thailand, police said on Monday.

Ashok Mittal, a resident of Kurukshetra in Haryana, was arrested on Tuesday near Kanhaiya Nagar metro station in west Delhi and a carton containing spurious drugs recovered from him.

"After questioning Mittal, we raided his godown in Inderlok (west Delhi) from where a big cache of fake medicines valued at Rs.60 lakh was recovered," Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijay Singh said.

Singh said Mittal used to export fake medicines of 22 different brands named as Nitrazepam, Zopic, Super Tada Rise and Halonite.

The medicines in the cache, police said, are used for sleep, pain relief and in sex stimulation.

Mittal told police that he used to procure order through Internet or via e-mail from people residing in foreign countries including the US, Britain and Thailand.

"He also used to search the firms and individuals on the internet who want to purchase these medicines," the official said.

"They would send Mittal the order sheet through e-mail mentioning medicines name, brand and quantity along with name and address of consumer residing in foreign countries to whom these medicines were to be delivered," the official said.

Mittal has his agents and suppliers in Ludhiana and Agra to whom he used to place order for arranging the medicines as per requirement.

Police said these people used to purchase the generic medicines having same name but at a very cheap price and paste the fake label of the reputed manufacturing medicine company on the rear side.

"The people would then send the stock of medicines to Mittal. After receiving these medicines, Mittal used to send them to the customers abroad mentioned in the order sheet through speed post," the official said.

According to the official, Mittal used to receive the money through unofficial sources. "He has visited Britain twice to establish and expand his business."