"We raided at least two shops and collected samples of five medicines yesterday to test them for alcoholic content. We sent these samples to a laboratory at Ghaziabad for testing," Drug Inspector (Berhampur), Sundarshan Biswal said.
The raids were conducted after several empty homeopathy medicine bottles were found scattered near Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BMC) building, the sources said.
Homeopathy drugs with high content of alcohol were suspected to be used as a substitute for liquor by some people, the sources said.
The Drug Inspector, however, said they did not find the particular drug from any of these two shops during the raids.
He said the raids would continue in other shops of the town.
Most of the shops downed their shutters after the raids began, he said.
"We will write to the companies of these particular brands to know the distributors of the medicine in the state," Biswal said.
The manufacturing centers of these particular brand medicines are in Rajasthan and Uttarakhanda, he said.
As per norms, shop-owners should maintain a register about the medicines which contains over 12 per cent alcohol. But many shop owners do not follow the rule, officials said.