4 former pharma firm employees held for data theft from firm

: Four former employees of a city based pharmaceutical company have been arrested for allegedly stealing data from the firm and using it to manufacture drugs illegally at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, police said here on Tuesday.

Acting a complaint by a senior executive of the company, which produces bulk drugs and pharma products here and in other cities, that their technology is their intellectual property, but was stolen and used by another firm to manufacture some products, a case was registered, a release from Cyberabad Police Commissionerate said.

Investigations revealed that the prime accused, who was a Business Development Manager in the company, was fired on the charge of malpractices after which he bore a grudge against the firm,its sister concerns and their management,police said.

He then hatched a plan and lured the other three workers with very lucrative job offers in his unit, following which they allegedly shared confidential data with the prime accused who started manufacturing the products at Visakhapatnam, police said.

The accused, who collected data pertaining to Batch Production Control Records, Specification, Certificate of Analysis, Standard Testing Procedure, Raw Data of the drugs were arrested from different places, police said.