A large quantity of fake vaccines against hepatitis virus and an illegal herbal medicine factory were busted yesterday in the city’s Rampura and Gulshan areas respectively.
A series of mobile court drives with RAB personnel and health directorate officials conducted the operations.
Yesterday’s operation was a part of the continuous mobile court drive conducted in recent times to seal off fake medicine factories and their production.
The mobile courts have recently closed down several dozens of fake medicine factories and 27 blood centres for their illicit acts and jailed over 200 people.
Led by Executive Magistrate Sharif Md Farhad Hossain, the mobile court busted “Green Herbal Medicine” on 58/1 Wapda Road, Rampura, and fined 14 people including the owner of the building which housed the medicine factory.
Factory Manager Osman Ali had been fined Tk2,00,000, or in default to serve a three-month jail sentence while others were fined Tk5,000 each, or in default to spend one month in jail.
“As the factory owner had been on the run, a separate case had been filed against him,” said the magistrate.
The magistrate said the illegal factory had been manufacturing various stimulating medicines and marketing them illegally over the last five years, endangering public health.
“Apart from sealing off the factory, a large quantity of stimulating medicines has also been seized and 14 people have been detained and fined.
In a separate drive in Gulshan, another mobile court led by its Executive Magistrate AHM Anwar Pasha jailed an employee of an NGO – Health Vision Bangladesh – for one year for illegally commercialising fake hepatitis vaccines.
The magistrate told the Dhaka Tribune acting on a tip-off they caught Md Tushar Imran, 21, of the NGO from Safura Tower at Kemal Ataturk Avenue in Gulshan.
“Health Vision Bangladesh has so far pushed fake hepatitis injections to over 150 people,” said the magistrate.
The NGO is located in Sajeeb Dhali Tower on road 2 of section 12 in the capital’s Pallabi.
“We have information that there are similar organisations dealing in fake vaccines against hepatitis virus,” said Pasha.
Two separate cases were filed against the organisation, he added.