IAS officer raised alarm six years ago but no one cared to listen

Nothing happened and Gupta’s Neeraj Clinic at Rishikesh continued to do roaring business. Gupta, on an average, would ‘treat’ 120 patients a day and would earn Rs 1.5 lakh a day.

On August 3, however, the Uttaranchal authorities, prodded by Governor Sudershan Aggarwal, pounced on the highest income-tax payer in the state (he paid Rs 1.5 crore last year).

Gupta was arrested under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) but not before amassing wealth worth Rs 300 crore which includes the Rs 100-crore state-of-the-art Seema Dental College at Rishikesh and a luxury hotel.

The police recovered 200 kg of tablets, which contained the banned phenobarbitone, barbital and chlordiazepoxide. The pills distributed to the patients had no ‘name’. Gupta himself called them ‘P’ (pink), ‘Y’ (yellow), ‘B’ (black) and ‘G’ (green) tablets.

In September 1998, the director of Mussoorie’s Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy, Binod Kumar, had got the tablets tested at the Central Indian Pharmacopoeia Laboratory, Ghaziabad. The report certified that the tablets had traces of phenobarbitone, a Schedule G H & K drug, which has been banned under the NDPS.

Kumar immediately wrote to Gopalkrishna Gandhi, then secretary to the President K R Narayanan, P C Halder, then Joint Director of Intelligence Bureau and Dr P C Das Gupta, then Drugs Controller General of India.

Kumar had requested them to stop the quack from killing thousands of patients, 95 per cent of whom were poor and gullible and were paying through their nose, hoping for a miracle.

When contacted, Kumar refused to comment, saying: ‘‘As director of the Academy, I am bound under oath not to speak to the media.’’

Shashi, mother of the patient whom Kumar had accompanied to the Neeraj Clinic at Rishikesh six years ago, confirmed the incident.

The letter to Gopal Gandhi read: ‘‘I am very deeply attached to an epileptic child, who is about 28 years old. Her mental age is 6-7. She is the daughter of a colleague of mine who died of leucaemia last year. I took this child to that gentleman (Dr R K Gupta). He gave her some pills and charged me Rs 3,000. I sent a few of these pills to the Central Indian Pharmacopoeia Laboratory of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to ensure that the pills do not contain any harmful drug, steroid etc. The report took some time to come.

‘‘In the interregnum, the child was administered these pills. On receipt of the report, a photocopy of which is enclosed for your perusal, I contacted Dr Maheshwari of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, under whose treatment this child has been for about 12 years. He directed that the pills be discontinued immediately. It was done.

‘‘Withdrawal effect of this drug called phenobarbitone, which she was consuming in measures larger than permitted, have been damaging. It was pathetic and heart-rending to see the child getting more frequent epileptic seizures, severe headache, total breakdown of her digestive system and several head injuries she suffered because of free fall during seizures.’’

Kumar urged Gandhi to ‘‘intervene by insisting that the UP Government (Rishikesh was then in UP) and the Union Government take immediate and effective action.’’ He also asked Gandhi to remove his photographs with Presidents Shankar Dayal Sharma and Narayanan that Gupta proudly displayed at his clinic, and ‘‘which lead gullible and uninformed people to believe that he is genuine and not a fraud.’’

Gandhi wrote back on November 13, 1998. He said: ‘‘I read your letter with great sadness. I am grateful to you for having brought this matter to our attention.’’

But Gupta continued to display larger-than-life photos of himself with Sharma and Narayanan. Gandhi, away in Norway, was not available for comment.

Then Drugs Controller General of India Das Gupta forwarded Kumar’s letter to Joint Secretary Renu Sahani Dhar. She sent a demi-official order (DO) to the then Health Secretary V K Dewan of the UP Government, asking him to take ‘‘necessary action’’ against R K Gupta. Nothing happened.

When contacted, Dhar, now posted in Himachal Pradesh, said: ‘‘I remember Binod Kumar’s letter. I had helped him show the child (the patient) to Dr Maheshwari at AIIMS. But I don’t remember what I did about the complaint.’’ Asked if she had forwarded the letter to Dewan, she said: ‘‘I might have, but I can’t recall now.’’

R K Gupta’s lawyer J C Gupta has maintained in the writ filed with the Nainital High Court that his client has been using drugs ‘‘which are not banned under the NDPS Act. Any doctor can freely use and distribute these medicines.’’