Agartala:Tripura Pradesh Congress (TPC) criticised Crime Inves-tigation Department (CID) of the state police allegedly for it’s politically biased chargesheet in spurious drug procurement case in 2013 and sought attention of the appropriate authority.
Talking to media here on Sunday, TPC Spoke-sperson Dr Ashok Sinha alleged that the left front government had handed over the case of spurious drug procurement case to CID when opposition political parties had exposed the corruption in buying of non-standard life-saving drug in November 2013.
According to Dr Sinha, state health department had filed FIR with police and West Agartala Police Station had registered the case under section 120 B and 420 of IPC and amended provisions of Indian Drug and Cosmetic Act 2004 following pressure from the opposition.
The Congress also lodged a separate FIR against the state health minister Tapan Chakraborty, former Additional Chief Secretary Dr K V Satya-narayana, former Director Health Service Dr S R Debbarma and six other officials for their alleged involvement in procurement of spurious drugs from Himachal Pradesh based Vardhaman Pharma Ltd and distributed those for public consumption.
In last July last year, CID concluded the investigation and submitted the chargesheet to the court where provisions of Indian Drug and Cosmetic Act 2004 has been excluded and only three people – owners of the company Minakhi Jani and M C Jain and chemist of the state drug testing laboratory Satyabrata Bhattacharjee.
Dr Sinha alleged with the influence of the ruling CPI-M, CID excluded the provisions of drug and cosmetic Act during inves-tigation to save the top officials of the state govern-ment who had approved the procurement order illegally from banned Vardhaman Pharma and made the chemist a scapegoat.
Reiterating the demand for re-investigation of the case as per the FIR, Dr Sinha stated that the state government had approved the order of procuring of non-standard drugs comprising with life saving injections Amikacin and Gentamycin, capsule Cloxacilline, tablets Amoxi-cillin, Antacid, Cefexime, Ciprofloxacin, Doxycycline, Erythromycin and Oflo-xacin.
He also had filed a PIL in the apex court last year seeking CBI probe into the scam and the Supreme Court bench comprising Justice A K Patniyak and Justice Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla issued notice to state governments and central government departments.
Dr Sinha further alleged due to consumption of such spurious drugs many people died in the various government hospitals in 2013. (UNI)
