BHUBANESWAR: The special task force (STF) of the state Crime Branch on Wednesday arrested three persons, including a woman in connection with the spurious anti-Covid drug trade.
The accused were associated with Cuttack-based medicine dealer Medilloyd Medicament Private Limited from where huge quantities of fake Favipiravir (Favimax) tablets were seized earlier this month that had prompted the chief minister Naveen Patnaik to order the Crime Branch probe on June 14.
The ones, who have been arrested, are identified as Subhalaxmi Jena, director of Medilloyd Medicament, Pritiranjan Parida and Satya Mohanty, the two key employees of the company.
Subhalaxmi is the wife of Siba Prasanna Jena, who owns Medilloyd Medicament Private Limited.
He is still at large.
The seized tablets in Cuttack were supplied by Noida-based Max Relief Healthcare in the middle of the Covid second wave.
Max Relief’s owner Sudeep Mukherjee was recently arrested by the Mumbai police.
Mukherjee’s claim that he had been manufacturing the medicines in Solan, Himachal Pradesh subsequently turned out to be false as the HP government clarified no such company existed in their state.
“We have found a clear nexus and criminal conspiracy between Max Relief Healthcare and Medilloyd Medicament to sell the fake drugs in the market.
Medilloyd procured the Favimax tablets from Max Relief Healthcare at only Rs 65 per strip of 10 tablets and had planned to sell them at a very high price of Rs 1290 per strip,” Crime Branch’s additional director general Jeshwant Jethwa said.
The arrests happened a few days after the STF roped in the Mumbai police to question Mukherjee and came to know about unholy collusion between Medilloyd and Max Relief.
The STF’s deputy inspector general J N Pankaj said they have traced and frozen nearly Rs 50 lakh bank deposits owned by Medilloyd and some of its key employees.
“We strongly suspect the Cuttack-based dealer not just distributed Favimax, but also sold several other spurious medicines in the state and outside.
Our teams have been probing in Odisha, Maharashtra and Kolkata to know their entire network,” Pankaj said.
The Crime Branch said Medilloyd was the marketing arm of some drugs manufactured by Max Relief Healthcare.
Sources said Siba Prasanna possessed a pharma third party manufacturing and loan licence to produce some drugs at Roorkee in Uttarakhand.
The Crime Branch is verifying the authenticity of the third-party licence.