Rs 5 crore fake drugs seized in Bengaluru farmhouse, four held

Fake and expired medicines worth nearly Rs 5 crore have been seized from a farmhouse in Bidadi, on the outskirts of Bengaluru, in a joint operation by the Food Safety and Drug Administration and police. Four people have been arrested. The cache included injectable antibiotics used to treat critically ill patients, raising fears that counterfeit drugs may have already reached hospitals and ICUs across Karnataka.

The racket allegedly involved procuring low-cost medicines from factories in Himachal Pradesh and Telangana, repackaging them into new vials and relabelling them as expensive multinational brands. NDTV reports the operators were filling cheaper drugs into new vials to resemble imported brands. The Times of India adds that the relabelled drugs were allegedly sold at a 10-times markup, from Rs 600-700 per vial to Rs 7,000-8,000.

Health minister U T Khader said the scale of the seizure raised serious questions about how much counterfeit medicine may already be in circulation. The government is considering forming a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe what Khader described as an interstate and possibly international racket. Investigators will now trace the movement of the drugs to identify ICUs where they may have been supplied and check whether any patients died or developed complications.