A joint operation by the Directorate of Drug Control and the Excise Department led to the seizure of a significant quantity of spurious medicines, including cough syrup, at a pharmaceutical farm in Sumandi village under Sadar police limits in Odisha’s Cuttack district on Wednesday night.
The farm’s owner, Jayram Sahu, and his assistant, Prafulla Kumar Jena, were arrested for allegedly stockpiling and distributing counterfeit drugs. A total of 32 different types of fake medicines were found at the site. The farm has been sealed by authorities as part of the ongoing investigation.
This seizure follows a series of recent busts targeting fake pharmaceutical operations in the state. The Odisha government had established a Special Task Force (STF), known as the Drug Enforcement Squad, after spurious BP medicines like Telma AM and Telma-40 were found being sold in Cuttack in September 2022. In February 2023, counterfeit O2 tablets from a fraudulent pharma company were detected in Cuttack, and in July 2023, Pantocid DSR was found in Angul.
The Drug Enforcement Squad has reported the confiscation of counterfeit drugs worth over Rs 1 crore in the past 16 months, highlighting the growing crackdown on the illegal drug trade in Odisha.
Further investigation into the spurious drug network is underway, with authorities working to trace the sources of these counterfeit medicines.
