Rajkumari and Darshan, both in their mid-30s and from Jharkhand, are leaving Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) after a check-up. They pause to collect themselves before navigating the medical stores outside. Rajkumari hangs on to her husband, who lugs an oversized bag that weighs him down. They have been given a list of medicines to buy.
Rajkumari was diagnosed with blood cancer about 10 months ago and referred to AIIMS for treatment. Since then, the couple has spent a large part of its savings on medicines, travel, and staying in Delhi. Darshan says he has sold their land to keep paying for the medicines.
He pulls out her prescription and points to a name. A single injection of the medicine costs around ₹1.5 lakh and his wife will need several vials. The drug is used in the treatment of blood and bone marrow cancers, including multiple myeloma. It is also among the high-value cancer medicines that figure in an investigation by Delhi Police’s Inter-State Cell into counterfeit and illegally diverted drugs. The racket, spread across Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Telangana, was busted in late August.
Aditya Gautam, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch, says Delhi Police has so far arrested 17 people and recovered 588 filled vials and 3,021 other medicines, all valued at about ₹9 crore. “Investigators found original cartons and empty boxes being retained and reused. Batch numbers, MRP details, and other identifying marks were allegedly removed with chemicals like acetone before the medicines were repackaged,” he says.
“Investigators found original cartons and empty boxes being retained and reused. Batch numbers, MRP details, and other identifying marks were allegedly removed with chemicals like acetone, before the medicines were repackaged”Aditya GautamDCP, Crime Branch, Delhi Police
The seized cancer drugs include Darzalex, Imfinzi, Erbitux, Opdyta, Gazyva, Bavencio, Adcetris, and Keytruda. Bavencio and Adcetris have been confirmed as counterfeit by the manufacturers; reports on the others are awaited.
A doctor at AIIMS involved in Rajkumari’s treatment says a red flag for a counterfeit drug is when it shows no results. He also says large discounts on drugs may indicate they are fake.
People pour in from across the country to Delhi for medical treatment.
In 2022, the national capital had nine Joint Commission International-accredited hospitals, meaning they meet global standards of clinical excellence. This is the highest number in the country, making Delhi a medical hub. This also brings with it the problem of counterfeit drugs.
Every month, Delhi Police and the Delhi Drugs Control Department report seizures of medicines they describe as “counterfeit, spurious, adulterated, illegally diverted or unauthorised”.
Substances seized range from basic allergy and skin treatment drugs to high-value cancer medicines, antibiotics, vaccines, and other life-saving pharmaceuticals.
Unless the operations are large, news of these raids and the names of the medicines seized seldom reach people. Tracing a fake medicine to a person is a long and expensive process, so it is seldom done.
Medicine raids
In May this year, spurious oxytocin injections in government hospitals in Rajasthan’s Kota were a major reason for the deaths of five women following caesarean-section deliveries. The same batch of spurious oxytocin had reached Delhi government hospitals too, sources say, after which it was seized by the Drugs Control Department.
Five days after the inter-State drug raid that seized cancer medicines, the Crime Branch, in a separate investigation, arrested Dr. Manish Sharma, 39, a resident of Faridabad in Haryana, for allegedly selling smuggled, suspected adulterated, and counterfeit life-saving drugs.
According to the police, Sharma had gone to Russia to study medicine and returned to India in 2014. He later worked at a hospital in Faridabad before opening his own hospital. After those ventures shut down, he and his wife started a polyclinic in the city. Sharma also registered HK Pharmaceuticals at the same address and began selling medicines on an e-commerce platform.
The police claim that he began sourcing medicines through illegal channels and selling them to buyers online. Last month, the Drugs Control Department seized a counterfeit anti-rabies vaccine worth ₹2 lakh from Chandni Chowk’s Bhagirath Palace. A government official says the department acted on a tip-off and sent the vaccine to a testing centre in Himachal Pradesh’s Kasauli.
The problem of counterfeit drugs is not new. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, the Crime Branch busted a facility allegedly manufacturing fake Remdesivir. At the time, hospitals were prescribing Remdesivir for COVID-19, and families were pooling savings to procure it, with one vial selling for as much as ₹90,000.
In 2022, spurious medicines valued at over ₹5 crore were seized from a factory at Tronica City in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad district. In 2024, investigators detected vials resembling high-value cancer drugs. Investigators are examining possible links between some of these and the present inter-State network, but no definitive connection has been established so far.
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