Fake sanitiser makers held
A duplicate hand sanitiser manufacturing unit was busted at Cherlapally under Kushaiguda police station limits on Wednesday. The products were sold as ‘Semuns Cleanse’ hand sanitiser and ‘Kausthuba Coclean 19’ hand sanitiser.
Sleuths of the Special Operations Team (SOT) of Rachakonda, along with police officers of Hyderabad and Ayush Drug Inspectors from Telangana, raided the duplicate manufacturing unit and seized huge
Semuns Cleanse and Kausthuba Coclean 19 stocks at Kushaiguda and Abdullapurmet and raw material worth
`60 lakh.
They arrested Managing Director of Seven Hills Softgel Company Krishna Kiran, General Manager Vemuri Venkata Subramanyam and Marketing Manager Vemuri Vishwanath. Police recovered
180 cartons containing
25,000 100ml bottles, eleven drums of Iso-propyl alcohol weighing 162 kgs and other material worth
`40 lakh. Investigations revealed that Kakarlapudi Krishna
Kiran obtained a licence for Ayush Softgel capsules and Syrups in 2018 and started operations at IDA Cherlapally.
Since the demand for hand sanitisers has increased multifold after the outbreak of Covid-19, demand for the products has skyrocketed while retailers sold them at exorbitant rates.
Commissioner of Police Mahesh Bhagwat said, “Normally, hand sanitisers turn dry as soon as they are applied on hands. But this particular company’s sanitiser does not.”
The accused distributed their products, Medipro, in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
While the approximate cost for manufacturing is `46 per bottle including
GST, the accused them at `144.
“We have seized 50 lakhs bottles of fake sanitisers from the manufacturing unit and its sub-unit. The groups appointed distributors in both States and supplied them to leading medical shops,” police said. Meanwhile, in another similar operation, police raided a manufacturing unit at Abdullapurmet and arrested Chandan Panjwani, Anil Kumar and Bommu Shanker.
Around 2,500 fake sanitiser bottles and other raw material worth `10 lakh were seized from the spot. priced