KOLKATA: The police have arrested one more middleman on Saturday for being allegedly involved with a gang that sold expired drugs as valid over-the-counter drugs. The investigating sleuths said that the accused was picked up from the Burrabazar area of central Kolkata. \"We had identified the accused Paltu Hazra (35) from the statements of the two other accused, especially printing press owner Pawan Jhunjhunwala. He is a resident of Janai in Hooghly with a shop at 22, Sukhia Street. While Pawan used to erase off the manufacturing date and batch details, Paltu used to reprint new dates and batch number on those,\" said joint commissioner (crime) Vishal Garg. There are a few more who would play a similar role in the gang for the past eight years,\" said an investigating officer. This fresh arrest takes the total number of those nabbed in this illegal business to three. The investigators have also identified a third company whose executives took active help of this gang to dispose unsold expired products. These companies allegedly even alleged arranged the printing machines at Burrabazar to the two Howrah based businessmen. \"You can say that the two arrested men - printing press owner Pawan Jhunjunwala and wholeseller Niresh Sarogi who were arrested by the police on Thursday night on the charge of changing the expiry date of expired medicines with new ones along with their batch numbers - were key ground players. The main culprits who ran the show from behind are yet to be arrested,\" claimed a source. The accused duo erased the expiry dates of medicines using those machines. \"We are preparing a list of the top officials of these companies. They would be interrogated,\" a senior official of the detective department said. Sources in Lalbazar said that the probe has now revealed that most of the expired medicines were generic products. \"These medicines were sometimes sold in the open between 17-30 percent discounts passing them off as fair price shop items thus fooling the buyers. These medicines were mostly sold from the Burrabazar-Posta region,\" claimed an officer adding that they will soon meet the Bagri Market traders whose cooperation would be sought to weed out such malpractices. The cops said that the probe will also look in to the role of several pharmacists who hand over the unsold expired drugs. \"We strongly believe that the gang took full help of the lapses in the system,\" said a police source. During investigations, the probe team found that several chemists complained that were not getting the cost of the expired drug reimbursed while returning them to the manufacturer. \"The medical representative pushes us to buy products but if we don't sell them, they return only 20% of the cost price,\" an ARS officer quoted a distributor. The cops claim it was this \"recovering of costs that the accused took to this illegal printing and selling of expired drugs,\" explained an officer.<\/p>\n
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Third arrest in expired medicine racket - Times of India<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KOLKATA: The police have arrested one more middleman on Saturday for being allegedly involved with a gang that sold expired drugs as valid over-the-counter drugs. The investigating sleuths said that the accused was picked up from the Burrabazar area of central Kolkata. Continue reading