A factory owner and worker were arrested on 17 March by the Delhi Police after being caugt with fake medicines, around 39,300 capsules of a popular drug used to treat heartburn.

The Delhi Police arrested a factory owner and his associate on the charge of manufacturing spurious medicines here, police said on 17 March. Police said the accused have been identified as Ashok Kumar, 42, who runs a factory manufacturing dye cutting and pasting of medicine strips, and his associate Bijender Singh, 55.

Kumar and Singh are residents of East Delhi's Pandav Nagar and Haryana's Faridabad, respectively. "Heavy quantity of spurious drugs and medicines, instrument and 39,300 capsules of PAN-D have been recovered from them," Joint Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar said. According to the police, the two were arrested on 17 March night when they were going to supply spurious drugs at Ajmeri Gate, near New Delhi Railway Station.

"They were carrying spurious drugs in an ECO van which was intercepted by a raiding team. During questioning, they failed to provide satisfactory reply nor did they produce any valid documents," the officer said. Acting on the inputs, police teams raided their manufacturing unit in Kirari in North West district where more than 1 lakh spurious capsules and tablets of different brands were recovered. According to the police, Singh earlier worked as a mechanic at drug manufacturing units in Haryana and Delhi for around 20 years. "He later came in contact with Ashok Kumar who had a manufacturing unit of dye cutting and pasting of medicine strips in Kirari," the officer said. They started manufacturing spurious medicines since 2016 and supplied them in Delhi, Bihar, Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida and West Bengal through their contacts, he added.