Following a complaint by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Thane police arrested four practising doctors on Friday who were found in possession of Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) pills.
Much before the arrest of the doctors though, the FDA had complained against a medical representative of a pharmaceutical giant who was supplying the MTP pills to the doctors. The medical representative, Anil Verma, was arrested on June 27 by the police and remanded to police custody. Meanwhile the four doctors were remanded to one-day police custody by the local court in Thane.
S.T. Patil, joint commissioner, drugs, FDA Thane, said, “We merely intimated the police about the activities of the medical representative. The police conducted its own investigation thereon, and arrested the four doctors. We did not complain against the doctors officially. That said, the doctors have been arrested because three of them are not allopathic doctors and them keeping and administering the MTP pills is a violation of the MTP Act.”
The four doctors, Dr Mukesh Kumar Singh, Dr Prakash Tondnekar, Dr Subhash Prasad Dubey and Dr Sunil Prajapati were arrested from Vasant Vihar, Ovala and Mapada respectively, where they had their clinics.
P. Uttarvar joint commissioner, drugs, FDA Maharashtra said, “MTP pills can be kept only by a qualified allopathic doctors. But the doctor should have transparent sales and purchase records and also the details of the patient who he has prescribed the pills to, failing which it can be held against him and action can be taken to prosecute him. However, Basic Medical Science (BMS) and Bachelor of Homeopathy and Health Sciences (BHMS) doctors just cannot keep MTP pills at all. It’s a gross violation of the law.”