Fake drug racket suspect who fled to Azerbaijan held on arrival in Bengaluru

An SIT official said that Rajanbabu’s arrest and interrogation would be crucial in the case.

Karnataka’s Food Safety and Drugs Administration (FSDA), which continued its raids on September 20, cancelled the licences of 16 retail and wholesale pharmaceutical firms across Bengaluru and suspended those of eight others, including a depot of global pharma major Pfizer, for their alleged role in selling or supplying spurious products.

According to the FSDA, preliminary investigations suggest that the racket procured cheaper medications from neighbouring states and refilled them into new vials and relabelled them to counterfeit expensive life-saving brands of multinational corporations, specifically imitating imported Pfizer products.

To deceive buyers and maximise illicit profits, the counterfeit labels featured QR codes that the FSDA found to be non-functional when scanned.

These counterfeit drugs lack active medicinal ingredients and may contain harmful substances, posing a serious threat to public health, the agency noted.