A man from Bihar India was indicted by a grand jury in Houston on June 26 on accusations that he shipped and sold fake cancer drugs to desperate patients in the U.S.
43-year-old Sanjay Kumar is accused of making tens of thousands on the fake cancer drugs. The day after the indictment, police arrested Kumar, who was in the country on a business trip to make deals to expand his operation, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Authorities say Kumar and a network of associates arranged an elaborate system to ship, and then sell, counterfeit cancer drugs, including the popular Keytruda. That drug provides a form of immunotherapy for cancer patients in a wide variety of types, including cervical and breast cancer, stomach cancer, head and neck cancers, Hodgkin lymphoma, and more. In total, it is approved for use in 19 different types of cancer.
Kumar faces up to 20 years in prison for each count he’s charged with, and they are numerous, including four counts of trafficking counterfeit medicine, one count of conspiracy to traffic, and more.
His arrest and indictment are not one offs when it comes to peddling fake drugs from India, and the problem is internal to the country as well. Back in March Indian police busted a criminal syndicate that was involved in every aspect of the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit medicines. New Delhi authorities arrested ten people involved in wholesaling, manufacturing, retailing, and distributing counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Cops closed down manufacturing plants and seized equipment for making the medicines and the packaging.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Europea agency, India’s recent success with its exploding pharmaceutical manufacturing sector has come with an equivalent downside. The OECD says India is the country from which nearly half of counterfeit drugs smuggled into Europe originate.
Observers of the medicine and pharmaceutical sectors say the growth in counterfeit drugs is a full-fledged public health crisis. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that for countries they rate as low or medium income, between 9 and 41 percent of the pharmaceuticals circulating are counterfeit. The problem with fake drugs is, of course, two-fold. Some of them may actively harm or kill the patient, but even counterfeit drugs that are not dangerous in and of themselves will stop a sick person from taking the drug that will actually treat or cure the condition.
