Three-year jail term for Franco Italian director

The metropolitan magistrate (sixth court) Mazgaon in south Mumbai has sentenced the director and quality control in-charge of the drug manufacturing firm Franco Italian Company to three year prison term as well as fine for manufacturing spurious Metakelfin tablets for export purposes.

The case was registered against the firm by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1994 and the ruling comes in the wake of the Union government's decision to mete stringent punishment to spurious drug manufacturers.

The company's director Uday Kanani and quality control in-charge Vivek Mahajan were sentenced to three years of rigorous imprisonment by metropolitan magistrate S A Karandikar who passed the order on a case detected by officials of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Assistant public prosecutor A T Gawde argued on behalf of the FDA (read state government).

The pharmaceutical firm, operating from Kandivli, a Mumbai suburb, manufactured Metakelfin tablets using a substitute drug Sulphamethoxy Pyridazine instead of labelled ingredient Sulphamethoxy Pyrazine.

The fact came to light following a consignment of the spurious tablets sold to Mumbai-based Toshnimal Export getting detected.

Investigating sleuths from the FDA, including drug inspector R B Banarase and O S Sadhawani, found that that Franco Italian Company had neither purchased nor imported Sulphamethoxy Pyrazine into India, despite which it manufactured Metakelfin tablets.

According to FDA officials, several spurious drug manufacturers in the state were flooding markets in Mumbai, Delhi and other sectors with fake drugs, on the strength of fake bills providing them with a fig leaf of legality about the import of proper ingredient for the drug. These fake bills are easily available and openly being sold from the 'Dava Bazaar' area in Mumbai.

FDA commissioner Uttam Khobragade, confirming the presence of these fake billing agents, however, said, "It is true that these 'billwallahs' exist but they operate on a small scale and mostly provide fake bills for bulk drugs that are smuggled into the country to avoid paying import duty and other levies."

These billing agents provide bills for such smuggled drugs to traders who then pass off the drugs to manufacturers. Many spurious drug manufacturers also resort to this mechanism to put a veneer of legitimacy to their operations.