BHUBANESWAR: The Special Task Force (STF) of Crime Branch on Thursday arrested the managing director of Medilloyd Medicament Private Limited, Shiba Prasanna Jena, in connection with the fake Covid-19 drugs case.
DGP Abhay said, Medilloyd, incorporated on April 20, 2012, was procuring medicines from a dubious firm, Max Relief Healthcare, whose owner Sudeep Mukherjee was earlier arrested by Mumbai police for allegedly manufacturing and supplying fake Covid-19 drugs to Maharashtra and other states.
A team of STF led by DSP Dilip Sahoo is collecting information from Vanrai and Samta Nagar police stations in Mumbai which have registered at least one case each in connection with the supply of fake drugs to Maharashtra and other states by Mukherjee and one of his associates. Apart from Max Relief which does not have a licence to manufacture Favipiravir, Medilloyd was also procuring medicines from a licensed firm in Uttarakhand’s Roorkee.
“We will request the court to bring Mukherjee on remand to Odisha for further questioning. Teams will also be sent to Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand as part of our further probe,” said a senior police officer.
Around 70,000 Favimax-200 and Favimax-400 (Favipiravir) tablets were seized from Cuttack based Medilloyd. The seized tablets have been sent to the Central Drugs Laboratory in Kolkata for further examination. Jena’s wife, who is a director of the firm, and two other officials were arrested in the case on Wednesday.