NEW DELHI: Nestled in the upscale DLF Greens in west Delhi’s Moti Nagar, the two flats betrayed no sign of unusual activity. However, investigators were shocked at the scale of operations going on towards the manufacturing of fake cancer and chemotherapy drugs.
Special commissioner Shalini Singh said a crime branch probe revealed how people from various fields had formed a nexus to target patients, not just from Delhi and neighbouring states but other countries too.
A key player, she said, was Viphil Jain from Baghpat, who ran the show in Moti Nagar. Having spent his childhood in Seelampur, he quit studies before finishing Class X. “After failing to finish basic education, he started dedicating his time at a medical store in Seelampur as a store boy. Initially, he started supplying medicines from wholesale markets to local medical stores,” Singh said.
A few years ago, he happened to discuss the idea of refilling cancer injections as these were expensive. Falling in the lifesaving drug category, selling fake injections could fetch big money, he believed. He chose expensive injection brands and involved two friends — Parvez and Neeraj Chauhan — to arrange for empty vials and supply the refilled ones.
Jain allegedly used to fill the vials with Fluconazole, an anti-fungal drug.
Chauhan was also from Baghpat and a graduate. He tried his hand at medical transcription and later was a manager in oncology departments of hospitals in Delhi and Gurgaon between 2006 and 2022.
In 2022, Chauhan joined Jain and helped grow his business exponentially. With his experience in the medical sector, he got clients by luring them with “chemo injections” at affordable rates. “Chauhan also ran a company for medical tourism and targeted those who came to India for cancer treatment…. Chauhan’s cousin, Tushar, was a lab technician and helped him in supplying injections in Bhagirath Place and other markets.
“Parvez earlier worked in a mixing unit of chemotherapy medicines at a reputed hospital, where the customer or the hospital used to give him medicines and injections for mixing with other medicines. He engaged Komal and Abhinay Kohli, working with reputed hospitals, to provide empty vials,” the officer added. Komal was a pharmacist at a cytotoxic admixture unit of a cancer hospital in Delhi since 2013. He supplied empty vials to Parvez for Rs 5,000 each. Kohli too was a pharmacist in the same unit as Komal. He also supplied vials.
An accused, named Suraj from West Bengal, was the caretaker of the flats.
