Cuttack: A joint team of the Directorate of Drug Control and Excise Department seized a huge cache of cough syrup and 32 types of counterfeit medicines during a raid on a pharmaceutical farm at Sumandi village under Sadar police limits in Odisha’s Cuttack district late on Wednesday.
The owner of the licensed farm, Jayram Sahu, and his aide, Prafulla Kumar Jena, have been arrested for allegedly stocking and trading spurious drugs, including cough syrups. The farm has also been sealed.
Further investigation is underway.
Notably, the state government had formed STF (Drug Enforcement Squad) after sale of spurious BP medicine- Telma AM and Telma-40, manufactured by a fake pharmaceutical company, came to the fore in Cuttack on September 6, 2022. Spurious O2 tablets, manufactured by a fake pharma company in the name of Medley Pharmaceuticals, was detected in Cuttack on February 28, 2023, and Pantocid DSR, manufactured by a fake pharmaceutical company in the name of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, in Angul in July 2023.
In January 2024, the Drug Enforcement Squad’s had claimed to have seized different kinds of spurious drugs worth over Rs 1 crore from the state in the last 16 months.