The Rajasthan High Court canceled the bail of a person alleged to have sold thousands of drug strips without purchase documents.
The applicant, Torrent Pharmaceuticals Limited urged that the lower court has erred in granting bail to the accused-respondent. It has based its order on wrong interpretation of the provisions of the Act of 1940.
It has been contended that under Section 19(3) of the Act of 1940, a person, not being the manufacturer of a drug or cosmetic or his agent for the distribution thereof, shall not be liable for a contravention of Section 18 if he proves that he acquired the drug or cosmetic from a duly licensed manufacturer, distributor or dealer thereof; he did not know and could not, with reasonable diligence, have ascertained that the drug or cosmetic in any way contravened the provisions of that section; and the drug or cosmetic, while in his possession was properly stored and remained in the same state as when he acquired it.
It was submitted that thousands of strips of Losar-H were sold to the accused-respondent. Every purchase bill was not supplied to the Investigating Officer.
It was also contended that for the sake of showing their genuineness, few bills and payment records were kept by the accused-respondent. It is also contended that strips that were seized were having the same code, the distributor ought to know that each strip has different code.
Thousands of strips were sold without there being any purchase documents and the details of such sale and purchase were not available in the ledger of the accused-respondent, which points out to the accused having knowledge that the drugs were spurious.
The single-judge bench of Justice Pankaj Bhandari held that the drug in question is Losar-H, which is a life-saving drug, the entire sale and purchase documents were not available with the accused-respondent. The drugs were found to be spurious and the strips were having the same code whereas each strip has a different code.
The court while taking into account that the main accused, who is the manufacturer, is still at large and there is a specific allegation in the charge-sheet against the accused-respondent of being part of the drugs racket, deemed it proper to allow the present bail cancellation application.
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