‘Fake medicines entering state via UP, Bihar, Odisha’

Kolkata: The officials of the state drug control suspect that fake medicines are being brought to the city by road and the consignments of fake medicines are coming to Kolkata in buses from states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha, as the preliminary investigation suggests.

State drug control officials will also take help from the drug control departments from other states as well to crack down on the interstate fake medicines rackets which have been operating for some time now. State drug control has already carried out raids in four medicine shops in Kolkata. Suspected medicines worth more than Rs 20 lakh were seized.

In the wake of a series of fake medicines being recovered from various parts of the state, the Directorate of Drug Control in Bengal has published phone numbers so that people can directly call at these numbers to draw the attention of the authorities if they suspect any strips of medicines or bottle to be fake. The numbers are 033 2225-2213/ 033 2225-2214.

Around 30 per cent of strips of medicines inside the boxes were found to be fake. These fake medicines were mixed inside the genuine medicine boxes. What was found to be shocking was that the manufacturing company failed to recognise the batch number of the Human Albumin seized.

It was found that several fake medicines were found during the raid. When QR codes are scanned it says, “Does not match any documents”.