A team of Detective Branch (DB) of police on Saturday night busted a gang involved in manufacturing and supplying spurious, counterfeit medicines and drugs, and arrested five of its members from Dhaka's Jatrabari area.
The oldest member of the gang named Sobhan has already confessed to the crime in the primary interrogation, police said.
Acting on a tip-off, the team from Serious Crime Unit under the DB police of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) conducted a drive in the Jatrabari area, arrested five members of the gang and recovered materials used in manufacturing adulterated drugs from their possession.
They arrested are identified as: Abdus Sobhan, Naimur Rahman alias Tusher, Riazul Islam alias Mridul, Nargis Begum and Wahid.
The gang has long been involved in manufacturing adulterated medicine like insulin path dine and other sedatives, police said.
Additional Commissioner (DB) Abdul Baten while briefing the media at the DMP Media centre on Sunday noon said, the gang was involved in producing duplicate packets of medicine using fake names of branded companies, also repack medicines with expired dates, label them with fake expiry dates and supply to small local pharmacies at cheap rates.
Additional Commissioner (DB) Abdul Baten addresses the media at the DMP Media centre on Sunday; February 03, 2019 | Courtesy
“They mainly targeted densely populated areas with poor people to run their business.”
The sellers of such pharmacies have very little knowledge of medicine and they sold such medicines to make extra profit, he added.
"Operations will continue to bring the entire gang under justice. We will also unearth manufacturing procedures, how they collected date-expired medicines and would arrest their kingpin soon," he said.
He advised city dwellers to buy their medicines from established and well known pharmacies to avoid such fraudulence.
To ensure supply of better and secured medicine, the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) is urging people to buy medicine from reputed pharmacies having specific dates on packets. They are also encouraging people to establish more and more Model pharmacies to strengthen their supervision.
A case has been filed with the Jatrabari police station and the arrestees have been sent to court seeking remand, the commissioner informed.
