JAMMU: Drug Control Department, which is known for corruption, malpractices and what not, got a well needed blow when in the much publicised spurious drug scam, Special Judge Anticorruption Jammu A K Koul on Tuesday directed Crime Branch to first seek a sanction for prosecution of Lotika Khajuria, Drug Controller, who was a member of purchase committee-II.
The court is of the view that there is sufficient evidence on record which reveals Lotika Khajuria’s involvement like other members of the purchase committee, who have been arraigned as accused, and it need not be re-stated that accused cannot be selectively arrayed or left out, when they are similarly placed.
Special Judge Anticorruption Jammu AK Koul further directed that the investigating officer has recommended departmental action against members of the verification boards but the justification for doing so does not appear to be plausible. So it is required that the Investigation Officer will identify the members of the verification boards who were supposed to check the quality, efficiency, purity etc. of the drug supplied after the approval of rate contract.
The investigating agency will also look into the fact as to how was the drug supplied without proper tests and who under law was having an obligation to do so.
Court further directed that investigating agency is also required to collect all the reports from concerned laboratories/experts where they have sent the samples/hard disc etc, and workout the effect thereof on the conclusions already arrived at.
Court further said that after conducting of further investigation the crime branch will submit a further investigation report to the court within two months positively. Any record required by investigating agency for the sake of carrying out further investigation may be provided to the I.O against proper receipt.
While passing the order, Special Judge Anticorruption Jammu AK Koul observed that court after going through the entire record collected by Investigating Officer, is bound to comment that even though enough of timehas been taken by Crime Branch to conclude the investigation yet the exercise though bonafide, appears to be incomplete.
On April 28, 2013, it was revealed that the spurious antibiotic drug, Maximizin-625, was supplied to two reputed hospitals of the state. And, the investigation was handed over to Crime Branch.
The offences were established against Dr Madhu Khullar, the then Director Health Services and Chairperson of the Purchase Committee, Lotika Khajuria, the then Deputy Drug Controller, Reva Gupta, the then Administrator Associated Hospitals and Joginder Kumar. However, the challan against them could not be produced for want of Government sanction for launching prosecution against them.
However, on June 20, 2013, the Crime Branch presented charge-sheet in the court of Special Judge Anticorruption Jammu against 14 persons and has approached the Government for according sanction to prosecute the serving Government servants, whose involvement was also surfaced in the scam.
The accused against whom chargesheet was presented included, Ashok Kumar Raina and Amardeep Raina, sons of Baskar Nath Raina of Vinayak Nagar, Akhil Kumar Gadoo, son of I K Gadoo of Tomal Colony Bohri, Prem Prakash Barnwal, son of Ganesh Prasad of UP and his wife Manjula Barnwal, both Directors of M/s Sanative Pharmaceuticals, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, son of Krishen Murari Agarwal of Patna (chemist in M/s Sanative Pharmaceuticals), Rahul Kumar Singh, son of Triguna Singh of Chapra Bihar, Mukesh Agarwal, Prop of M/s Suraj Enterprises c/o Yogesh Dhawan of Satya Vihar Dehradun, Zubair Ahmad, son of Sain Mohammad of Jasola Vihar near Delhi, Neeraj Agarwal, son of Salekh Chandra Agarwal of New Delhi, Sunil Gupta, son of B K Gupta of Channi Himmat, Dr A K Sharma, the then Medical Superintendent SMGS Hospital, Dr Aniece Choudhary, the then Principal Government Medical College Jammu and Dr S C Khajuria, the then Assistant Director Family Welfare Department. The offences under Section 274, 420, 465, 467, 468, 471 and 12-B RPC read with Section 5(2) PC Act, 2006 have been established against all these accused.
An insider visited STATE TIMES office and told that the present Drug Controller Lotika Khajuria became Controller on the directions of the High Court in place of Wani who also had many cases of irregularities in his favour and had High Court order against him to his credit.
A common man is suffering a lot due to spurious eatables, spurious medicines, over charging of medicines, sale of medicines without prescription and sometimes expired medicines in J&K state without any proper check for obvious reasons.