Spurious vs original: How officers spotted fake weight loss drug Mounjaro, busted a racket running out of Gurgaon flat
Even as Drugs Control officers Amandeep Chauhan and Mukesh Kumar await the lab results on the peptide samples seized as part of the probe against the illicit operation, the difference in the packaging that they have flagged is telling.
The picture shows the original and spurious version (with a seal) of Mounjaro.
A noticeable difference in colours used on the packaging, different fonts and typographical errors — this is what helped the team of the Drugs Control Office in Gurgaon identify fake injections of weight loss and diabetes management drug Mounjaro last week as they busted a racket operating out of a flat in the city and arrested the mastermind, Avi Sharma, and his accomplice Mujammil Khan. Spurious injections worth Rs 56 lakh were seized from a car.
Even as Drugs Control officers Amandeep Chauhan and Mukesh Kumar await the lab results on the peptide samples seized as part of the probe against the illicit operation, the difference in the packaging that they have flagged is telling.
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On the front side, the officers highlighted that the box of the fake injection had different shades of blue and red as compared to the original one. Also, a different font was used on the spurious Mounjaro’s box. While both boxes have an illustration of an injection pen, it is clear and bright on the original one but blurred, darker, and shorter on the fake version, Chauhan said.
The width of the red arrow that points to the injection pen on the front side also differs, appearing thicker and shorter on the fake one, he added.
Officers flagged an overall difference in the clarity on the rest of the packaging. The seized stock’s storage advisory section was in plain text, compared to the bold font on the original version.
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Typographical differences make up for the rest of the differences – a comma is present after the pincode in the manufacturing address of the fake one, which also has a semicolon before the toll free number for complaints. The second I in Tirzepatide (the name of the injection) is lower as compared to the rest of the letters on the box of the spurious injection.
Meanwhile, the Gurgaon Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has written to their counterparts in other states about the batch numbers of the seized drugs and vials, asking to report to them if similar numerical markings as spotted on the seized stock are spotted elsewhere.
The picture shows the original and spurious version (with a seal) of Mounjaro.
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