The Navi Mumbai police in Maharashtra claimed to have busted an inter-state racket of illegal sale of medicines meant for defence and ESIC hospitals and arrested nine people, an official said on May 21.

The accused allegedly procured an anti-diabetic medicine, Galvus 50 mg manufactured by Novartis company, for sale in the retail market by erasing its stamp mentioning 'for defence' and 'not for sale', Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Kumar said in a release.

The drug stock was exclusively meant for supply in defence and Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC)-run hospitals, the police said. The investigation revealed that the medicine was procured from Pune, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra and from other others place like Amritsar (Punjab), Jammu, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), Indore (Madhya Pradesh) and Patna (Bihar), he said.

After erasing the declaration of 'defence supply' and 'not for sale' from the drug strips with special chemicals, they were allegedly sold with fake bills to the Medlife online pharmacy company, he said. The police got a tip-off after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials recently found the drug stock lying at the online pharmacy's unit in Taloja area of the neighbouring Raigad district, he said.

Those arrested were identified as Mahesh Nagansure (36), Sachin Vadaskar (29), Sachin Baldava (42), all from a drug distribution unit in Navi Mumbai, Nirajkumar Singh (26) from a pharmacy in Pune, Sanjay Garg (49) and Tarun Madan (30) from Delhi, Harprasad Gupta (47) and Shivam Gupta (26) from Agra and Dinesh Mahajan (30) from Jammu.

They were booked under Indian Penal Code sections for cheating and forgery, and provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, the police said. A probe was on and some more arrests were likely in the case, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Tushar Doshi said.