“Gentlemen! This medicine is made of the leaves from a holy tree. The divine tree is so powerful that if a girl eats its leaves, she will be able to sleep with 30 men in a day. So think what it can do for the men!” The speaker, a man with curly hair who everyone calls “Chandan Da,” spoke through a microphone as he addressed a small crowd in front of the capital’s Ananda cinema hall in Farmgate.
At his side, a dwarf performed a panoply of magic tricks like transforming paper flowers into different colours or turning an open bottle of water upside down without any spills.
Chandan promised to demonstrate tricks like levitating a glass in mid-air, but instead he moved on to advertise medicines while encouraging the crowd to stay until the end of his pitch for the “ultimate” magic.
Liberally using the word “khanki” (prostitute) to refer to women, he continues: “The extract from the leaves of this tree are used in medicine. If you write down the name of your favourite girl on the leaf and wear it as an amulet, that girl will never be able to have intercourse with any man except you—however, she might still talk with other men,” he cautions.
Arriving around noon, I had found the performer setting up the stall and sound system. Initially, he began by reading from a book called “Bissher Kamasutra Samagra”. The book contained illustrations of different sexual positions that he gleefully showed to the gathered crowd.
Chandan kept saying he would bring out the medicines after finishing his lecture, but there was no medicine around the stall - only a few props for magic tricks lay scattered on the table.
Not too far from Chandan’s stall, however, was a car parked in the middle of the footpath. Some boxes and sachets of herbal medicines had been displayed on the bonnet of the car. One medicine named “Castom”, which was on display, claimed to give men better sexual strength. The owner of the car wouldn’t tell me his name, but did inform me he was a Jatra performer by profession.
A laminated certificate, apparently a licence to manufacture drugs under the Drugs (Control) Ordinance 1982, contained the signature of Major General Md Jahangir Hossain Mollik, director general of the Drug Administration and Licensing Authority.
Another man, setting up a microphone atop the car roof, said they were employees of Sadek Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd, which produces the “Eunani” medicine. Both of them said they made a good profit by selling the medicines, and that the medicines were in high demand.
This man started to speak over his microphone, reciting a few lines of the Quran. He went on to say that the medicines were available at this stall for a reduced price of Tk100 compared to the normal price of Tk300 everywhere else.
When I later asked Major General Mollik, he said he’d never heard of Sadek Pharmaceuticals. “They do not have the authority to advertise like this. It is a punishable act. They cannot just name any medicine as ‘herbal’ and sell it,” he said.
He added that such makeshift stalls were regularly evicted from Farmgate. When I told him Sadek Pharmaceuticals was running a stall there, the DG said he would send his officials to investigate.
According to the Drugs (Control) Ordinance 1982, which was amended in 1997, the publication of advertisements relating to the use of drugs is illegal, as is promoting unsubstantiated claims about therapies or treatments without prior approval from the licensing authority. Such offences are punishable by imprisonment of up to three years and/or fines of up to Tk2 lakh.
Sharif Md Farhad Hossain, the former executive magistrate at RAB-10, said the certificates and the medicines were likely fake. Even if the medicines were authentic, according to sections 36 and 37 of the Drugs Act 1940, publicity or advertisement of any medicine on the streets is illegal.
A mobile court led by Magistrate Farhad evicted some of these “herbal” drug sellers from Farmgate and Gulistan a year ago.
“I seized their car, medicines and other materials and sentenced 11 of them to one year of imprisonment each. But after coming out, they are back to business,” he said.
When asked about the identities of these sellers, Farhad said “You can call them simply a ‘group of cheats.’ They keep on chanting indecent things and showing albums full of nude photos to people – particularly to the young crowd – to stimulate them. Their customers are mainly adolescent labourers, students and people who come to watch cinema at the adjacent cinema halls. They have deliberately chosen the spot at Farmgate as it is full of coaching centres and cinema halls.”
Farhad, who has been researching fake medicines for the last two and half years said, “Although these oils and tablets might stimulate one instantly for the first two/three days, it ultimately makes them sexually disabled if they keep taking these for over a month. This is how the business rolls on. These people then come back to these sellers to buy more medicine. But this time they demand higher prices.”
“Diseases related to sexuality need to be addressed by a physician. There are proper medicines for better sexual strength, and there are different doses for men and women of different ages,” he said.
Farhad explained that these group of cheats sometimes contaminate the actual medicines and change the packaging. And when they use authentic medicines, they often recommend a higher dose.
Farhad believes that such businesses have a harmful long-term impact on society. Although their customers include men and women belonging to different spheres of society, these businesses rely largely on labourers their main customer demographic. According to Farhad, the increased number of rapes that occur in the country may be a consequence of such illegal businesses.
Such medicines stimulate one instantly. Take peppermint, for example. It refreshes one’s mouth for two minutes, but then it is gone forever. However, when it comes to sexual strength, if it is gone, and you need it again, you will go back to the herbal medicine repeatedly and this is when herbal remedy sellers will charge you triple the price, or more.
