₹4.91 crore in spurious and allegedly relabelled medicines, seized at a Bidadi farmhouse. A State SIT now owns the ICU-supply scare.

Spurious and allegedly relabelled medicines worth ₹4.91 crore were seized at a farmhouse near Bidadi. Karnataka has now put a six-member special investigation team on the file.

On Thursday the State government constituted that team, headed by Joint Commissioner of Police (West) C. Vamshikrishna, to take over the probe into an alleged spurious-drug racket in Bengaluru South district. The special investigation team is to function under the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order). A takeover order is not a chargesheet. These remain police and ministerial allegations pending the team’s findings.

The raid that forced the new paper was on Tuesday evening. Officials seized spurious and allegedly relabelled medicines worth ₹4.91 crore from an unlicensed repacking and relabelling unit at a farmhouse near Bidadi. Unlicensed is the licence sentence. Farmhouse is the geography. ₹4.91 crore is the seized-stock value on this card. This desk will not invent a vial count, a brand list, or a wholesale invoice that is not locked here.

What officials say they found is mechanical and specific. Lower-cost and generic medicines from other States were allegedly refilled into new vials and relabelled to mimic expensive brands and imported drugs. Thirty boxes of expired medicines were also seized, raising suspicion that expired stock was being pushed back into the supply chain. Refill, relabel and expired boxes are allegation verbs on a raid account. They are not a laboratory certificate this desk will invent, and they are not a conviction.

A day after the raid, Health and Family Welfare Minister U.T. Khader said the unit was part of a nationwide racket. Drugs, on his account, were procured cheap from fake manufacturing units in Himachal Pradesh and Telangana, then relabelled and sold to shops and hospitals. His locked sentence is blunt: even medicines given to patients in intensive-care units were mislabeled. That is a minister’s allegation about intensive-care supply. It is not a ward-by-ward hospital audit on this page. This desk will keep the intensive-care claim labelled as his charge.

The special investigation team’s named members are Bengaluru Superintendent of Police Shiva Prakash Devaraju, Criminal Investigation Department Superintendent of Police Lokesh B. Jagalasar, assistant drug controllers Manjunath Reddy and Namrata Hallur of Bengaluru South, and drug inspector Neha Murki. Six members including the joint commissioner is the locked roster. The main accused named on this card, Prashanth, described as a medical representative, remains at large. At large is not absconding with a court process invented here. It is the status on the tip.

Bengaluru South is the district of the racket paper. Bidadi in Ramanagara is the farmhouse geography of the Tuesday evening raid. This desk will not invent a survey number for the farmhouse, a courier route from Himachal or Telangana, a shop bill, or a hospital purchase order. It will not put accused faces on an Investigate page, and it will not lift a news-agency raid frame.

Until the special investigation team writes, the public ledger is a six-member team under the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) headed by Joint Commissioner C. Vamshikrishna, a Tuesday evening farmhouse seizure of ₹4.91 crore in spurious and allegedly relabelled stock near Bidadi, refill-and-relabel allegations aimed at expensive and imported brand mimicry, thirty boxes of expired medicines, a minister’s nationwide-racket charge naming fake manufacturing units in Himachal Pradesh and Telangana, an intensive-care mislabel allegation in his words, a named police and drug-control roster, and a medical representative named Prashanth still at large. Spurious stock in an intensive-care chain is the public fear on this card. The team’s finding is not yet written.