Mumbai: The Mumbai sessions court has rejected the pre-arrest bail application of a 40-year-old Navi Mumbai resident booked for allegedly making and distributing blood pressure monitors during the Covid-19 pandemic without a license. The accused has alleged to have sold thousands of such monitors, including 84,000 to Apollo Hospitals and Apollo Pharmacy.
As per the case registered with Gowandi police, on January 1, complainant Shubhangi Bhujbal, a drug inspector, received a letter from Drugs Controller General India (DCGI) stating that M/s Conceptreneur Ventures Pvt Ltd was manufacturing BP Monitor without a license. The letter was issued based on the complaint lodged by Kaship Khan, a Delhi resident, who had purchased a monitor and purportedly found it to be faulty.
Khan had reported the matter to the local office of the drug controller, which resulted in the issuance of the letter by the DCGI.
On receipt of the letter, the food and drugs administration raided the factory and noticed that manufacturing of the BP monitors was in progress in presence of its director, Gaurav Vaidya, 40. The drug inspector claimed that the company failed to produce any license for manufacturing of the machines and hence reported the matter to the police.
The complainant claimed that as per the record, the applicant had sold thousands of BP monitors, including 84,000 sold to Apollo Hospitals and Apollo Pharmacy, which had returned some instruments to the manufacturer due to some faults.
On the contrary, Vaidya claimed that he had not manufactured any defective machines, as alleged in the FIR against him. Therefore the charge of cheating was also not applicable to the case.
The court, however, observed that the offence was serious, as the accused had manufactured BP monitors without a license that too during the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore thorough investigation was required to be conducted.
“The applicant sold the said machines during the Covid-19 period and sold the same to the customers,” said the court, rejecting Vaidya’s pre-arrest bail plea.
“It also reveals that the applicant manufactured machines without a license from the Government of India. Thus, the offence is serious in the sense that the life of a person depends upon the count of the machine if the count shows error, then further treatment will also be affected,” the bench noted.
