- I Paid A Bribe
- 13 years ago
- 1958 views
FDA playing with peoples health and Peoples Business for Money..
- Food and Drug Administration
- License for Sale of Drugs
- Paid INR 2,00,000
I am only 23 years old and was shocked to witness something that was totally unethical and really very disgusting. This is the case which happened with my father. We owned our small Ayurvedic medicine business and as per the regulations, we had safegaurded our Intellectual property of our medicines, by securing Trademarks for all the medicines. After 10 years of our business, one of the local Ayurvedic manufacturing company, started manufacturing the same medicine as ours, by the same name, same design, infact it was the exact replica of our product. They started invading our market and sold the duplicate medicines at very cheap prices. Here comes the first question, who granted them the permission to produce their product? FDA, with whom our product was already registered. And I guess I dont need to say that this was one of the many cases of bribe. But it did not stop here. When we complained to the FDA, we were asked to file a legal case against the opposite manufacturer. On doing this, the FDA officials took thousands of rupees from us every time we visited them. And later we came to know that the same was the case with the other manufacturer. These officials instead of helping us, were extracting money from both the parties. I dontt know how much total money we paid at the end, but we reached at the position that we could no more fight. We lost everything which we earned in 10 years, and had no options but to quit. About the case, as you might have guessed, its still on the bench and we always get a new ********** after each hearing. The other party is openly producing these medicines, which are for sure, cheap in quality too. We had to stop our business ultimately and now have nothing to do. Even if this case did not involve huge amount of money, some lacks of rs. were the only asset we had and we lost it, and not only that, we lost our livelihood because of such corrupt and unresponsible officers. When I 1st visited FDA with my father, I was very excited and proud to go their, but on my other trips their, I was saddened how the Food and Drug Authority can play with people and their lives, for money. We paid bribe, or may be I should not call it a bribe, it was not intended to do something wrong or against law, it was only to gt justice, but ya we paid those officials lacks of money in total. These officers include, the main authority for ayurvedic medicines approval, the law officer for FDA, and many more. I can imagine how big pharma companies worth Billions of dollars, might be getting their product approved from the Indian FDA. Right now I am in canada and here I see that people from this part of the country know all this and so these companies here think that they can sell any ********** in INDIA. Almost any product can be approved. In short you never know what you are taking as your medicines. This case took everything from me and my family. I am writing this so that atleast others dont suffer as we did. And yes forgot to tell you, all the drug inspectors around maharashtra and I am sure all over India, take a huge amount of money from everyone when they come for inspection. It is a routine practise that any pharma business holder has to pay that bribe or money when a drug inspector visits his firm. If you do so, even if you are caught for selling expired goods, you will not be reported, and in contrast if you dont pay the bribe, you will be detained even if you are innocent, Its a kind of HAFTA which all of them pay to these Drug inspectors.
Very disgusting but this is the reality. I am not concerned with the money part of it, but I am more concerned with peoples lives. If such things continue, I wonder how much we will be risking our lives by taking such medicines.