Delhi HC Notice To Centre On Petition Against Sale Of Expired Medicines [Read Petition]

The Delhi High Court on Friday issued a notice to the Centre on a petition against the sale of expired medicines.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice VK Rao issued a notice to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Drug Controller General of India on a petition moved by advocate Amit Sahni.

Sahni prayed that the Centre be directed to undertake appropriate measures to curb the sale of the expired drugs.

He said in his petition that, “In the last year, Bengal police had busted a Drug Mafia with fake drugs worth Rupees Ten Crores and the accused involved in the case were reselling medicines by changing the expiry dates. The accused used to purchase such medicines from the medical shop saying that they would be disposing the same in scrap”.

The petitioner also shared a link to a video on YouTube saying he came across the video in July.

The video shows a person erasing original manufacturing dates, expiry date, maximum retail price and other details and re-stamping fabricated manufacturing date, expiry date, maximum retail price and other details on expired drugs.

Sahni had sent a representation to the Centre in July, but no action was taken.

He prayed for a direction to the Centre for taking appropriate measures for replacing the existing mechanism of stamping the strip of medicine with another method viz printing etc., so as to avoid or minimize the re-use of expired medicine by stamping afresh with a new expiry date after erasing existing manufacturing date/expiry date/price etc.