Last week, on 20th September, a 1200-page chargesheet filed in the fake drug supply case unearthed last year revealed that the antibiotics delivered to government hospitals in the Nagpur city of Maharashtra were nothing but talcum powder mixed with starch.
The chargesheet states that the counterfeit antibiotics were manufactured in a veterinary medicine laboratory in Haridwar. The fraudulent drugs were distributed throughout India, including hospitals in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand.
The money for the fake drugs came from hawala networks, which the racketeers used to send crores of money from Mumbai to Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. As per the reports, Hemant Muley has been identified as the principal perpetrator as he participated in the tender to supply counterfeit drugs. Apart from him, Mihir Trivedi and Vijay Chaudhury have been charged, with the latter already in jail for a previous fraud case.
Chaudhury subsequently identified Saharanpur-based Robin Taneja alias Himanshu and Raman Taneja as his operation partners. “We reached the Haridwar veterinary laboratory of Amit Dhiman after the Taneja brothers named him. Dhiman was in jail after being arrested by Uttarakhand STF. He was later arrested in our case too,” said IPS officer Anil Mhaske.
The horrific case surfaced in December 2023, when drug inspector Nitin Bhandarkar discovered that the drugs supplied to the rural hospital in Kalmeshwar were fake. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug inspector filed a complaint against the suppliers and distributors at Kalmeshwar police station. The civil surgeon’s office also blacklisted the firms as a follow-up measure.
Rural SP Harssh A Poddar took up the matter for a special investigation and delegated it to IPS officer Anil Mhaske, who is currently assigned as SDPO Saoner. After the Nagpur rural police probe revealed appalling facts, identical complaints against the racketeers were filed in Wardha, Nanded, Thane, and other parts of Maharashtra.
Mhaske stated that the charges were initially filed against Hemant Muley, who had participated in a tender to supply drugs to government hospitals in Nagpur. In addition to Muley, charges were filed against Mihir Trivedi and Vijay Chaudhury. Chaudhury was already in jail for a similar fraud case when he was apprehended by the rural police.
Following Chaudhury’s interrogation, rural police launched an operation in Haryana after he identified one Gagansingh as the supplier of the fake medicines.
“We had gone to Haryana to raid the location and found a salon there,” said Mhaske adding that Chaudhury later identified the Taneja brothers in the given case. “We reached the Haridwar veterinary laboratory of Amit Dhiman after the Taneja brothers named him. Dhiman was in jail after being arrested by Uttarakhand STF. He was later arrested in our case too,” said Mhaske. He also said that the racketeers’ bank details and transactions showed multi-crore dealings.
