Viagra-seller sent behind bars for six months

A drug court in Karachi has sentenced a medical store owner to six months’ rigorous imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs100,000 for possessing and selling many unregistered medicines, including Sildenafil Citrate or generic Viagra.

Ali Muhammad, son of Nazeer Muhammad, owner of Prince Medicos, Landhi, was in possession of many unregistered drugs, including smuggled pain medicines, antihistamine drugs, medicines for the treatment of gastrointestinal problems, as well as illegal Viagra tablets which are sold as ‘hotcakes’ in Pakistan.

Secretary Quality Control Board Sindh Adnan Rizvi told The News on Wednesday that Federal Inspector of Drugs (FID) Hakim Masood along with Abdul Rasool Shaikh and others had raided the medical store in the Landhi area and found a huge quantity of smuggled, unregistered and spurious drugs.

“The chairman of the Provincial Drug Court of Sindh Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah handed out the sentence the accused Ali Muhamamd, who had confessed to possessing the unregistered drugs,” Rizvi said.

Despite being declared illegal as the drug is not registered in Pakistan by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), millions of tablets of generic versions of Viagra are sold in Pakistan after being smuggled from neighbouring India, Afghanistan and Iran, officials said, adding that even some manufacturers produce the drug locally after getting the raw material smuggled from the neighbouring countries.

Rizvi said the provincial drug court is now deciding cases promptly and sentencing people to rigorous imprisonment and also imposing heavy fines for playing with the lives of people by selling smuggled medicines.

He also urged the federal and provincial drug inspectors to register cases against drug sellers who were involved in selling spurious and counterfeit medicines, so that their cases could timely be decided by the drug court to curtail this practice.

Senior DRAP official Abdul Rasool Shaikh said they along with FIDs from the DRAP had seized a huge quantity of medicines which were not registered with the DRAP and even the Drug Testing Laboratory of the DRAP found these drugs to be unregistered, which were not supposed to be sold in Pakistan.

“The accused pleaded guilty before the drug court and regretted his acts. We also provided ample evidence before the court and the drug court in its judgment sentenced him to 6 months RI and fined 100,000. If he fails to pay the fine, he would have to spend two months more behind bars,” he added.

Despite being declared as an ‘illegal’ medicine in Pakistan, Sildenafil citrate is the most common drug recovered during raids at pharmacies across Pakistan, officials said.

DRAP officials said Sildenafil citrate is the most common unregistered drug which is recovered during raids at medical stores from Karachi to Khyber. Commonly known as Viagra, its different brands are the most running items at pharmacies in the country, they added.

At the moment, federal and provincial drug inspectors are raiding pharmacies, medicine markets and warehouses across Pakistan in a drive against spurious and unregistered drugs as well as life-saving drugs which are being hoarded by the dealers, but during every raid the most common drug they find are the various smuggled brands of Sildenafil citrate.