Senior officials from drug regulating agency held

The CBI has arrested two senior officials of the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) within a week on charges of corruption, raising red-flags on the extent of malpractices in India's drug regulator.

Naresh Sharma, deputy drug controller at the CDSCO headquarters and one of India's top-most regulators, was taken into the custody by the CBI on August 16 after the central probe agency received complaint against him from a pharmaceutical company.

On August 12, CBI picked up Ankur Bansal, a drug inspector based at Baddi in the Solan district of Himachal Pradesh, and few officials of a pharmaceutical company on the charges of “corrupt and illegal activities of extending undue favours in inspection of companies whose drug samples got failed during testing in lieu of huge amount of money.”

With two corruption cases within a week, Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan on Friday met V G Somani, the new Drugs Controller General of India, and sought to know how the CDSCO planned to weed out corruption from the agency, sources told DH.

While Sharma has been suspended, Bansal and three officials of the company were produced in the court of a special CBI judge at Mohali.

“All stakeholders, public and officers shall take cognizance of the fact that CDSCO has the policy of zero tolerance towards corruption and is committed to act stringently against any act of corruption,” the health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Sharma was arrested for seeking a bribe of Rs 5 lakh from a Mohali-based company to grant a license to manufacture bulk drugs (active pharmaceutical ingredients).

Bansal, on the other hand, was picked up after he assured the official of an Amritsar-based company that he would “settle” their case of manufacturing poor quality dobutamine injections (used for heart patients) that failed during the regulatory testing.

Sources familiar with India's drug regulatory system pointed out that corruption, bribery and malpractices were commonplace in the drug regulatory system, but only a handful of cases are reported to the anti-corruption agencies.

In one such case in June 2012, the anti-corruption unit of the CBI arrested D K Chauhan, an assistant drugs controller at the CDSCO, posted at air cargo complex of Sahar International Airport in Mumbai and a staff of the Custom House Agent for taking a bribe of Rs 50,000 from an importer for issuing a no objection certificate for a consignment of of life-saving drugs imported from Sweden.