Ahmedabad: Alleged kingpin of spurious injection racket held

AHMEDABAD: City crime branch sleuths have arrested the alleged mastermind of the spurious tocilizumab racket, Sohel Tai, from Surat, and nabbed his associates Ashish Shah and Akshay Shah.
Crime branch sources are tight lipped about where the Shah brothers were held.

Crime branch sources said Tai has been tested for Covid and was presented in court on Wednesday. The Shah brothers have been sent for pre-arrest Covid tests.
The Gujarat Food and Drugs Control Administration (FDCA) busted the racket, under which nandrolone decanoate was packaged and sold as tocilizumab through a bogus company, Generic Pharma, owned by Tai.
“The injections were even administered to severely ill Covid patients. The accused sold the spurious injections in Surat and Ahmedabad. When the investigation of the case was handled by Vastrapur police, two other suspects, Harsh Thakor and Nilesh Laliwala, were arrested. The investigation was later transferred to crime branch,” said a senior crime branch official.
Crime branch sources said the misleading packaging material and labels was printed in Ahmedabad by Laliwala and Thakor and then sent to Surat. There, Tai and the Shah brothers would then pack the steroid nandrolone decanoate in the boxes.