The recent raids conducted in wholesale medicine markets have revealed facts about several irregularities, including sale of spurious drugs, tax evasion and others.

Following the raids, the administration has sealed as many as 13 medicine stores.

Four persons have been sent to jail in this connection. Till Thursday, the drug department officials are preparing the seizure list of huge quantity of drugs recovered during the raids.

District drug inspector Rajiv Kumar Gupta said a large quantity of physician's samples was recovered from the shops that have been sealed and four persons who were caught running shops without licence have been sent to jail. "We are preparing a seizure list of the recovered drugs. Cost of the drugs can be assessed only when the seizure list is complete while laboratory test will confirm whether it are original or duplicate. We are also taking help of sales tax officials to assess tax evasion by these shop owners," he said.

According to Gupta, there are more than 1,200 licensed wholesale and semi-wholesale shops in Gaya.

There are indications that several drugs are manufactured here in Gaya and supplied to other states too. These duplicate drugs can cause threat to life too.

During the raids, a large quantity of physician's sample of different drugs has been seized. In many of the physician's samples, price of the drug was found more than actual cost fixed by the manufacturing company. Large quantity of drugs of several reputable companies has been recovered during the raids.

Such large quantity of physician's sample is not sent by any company for a particular district and it indicates that the drugs recovered are duplicate, a source said.

Pointing towards another irregularity, the source said, there are not less than 300 vendors active in the medicine trade who lift large quantity of drugs from authorised agencies and supply at wholesale, semi-wholesale and also the retail shops. These vendors get the bills of the quantity issued in the name of such shop that actually does not exist. They supply the drugs at semi-wholesale and retail shops without a bill at comparatively low price than with the bill. By purchasing unbilled drugs, semi-wholesale and retail shop owners get better margin on sale. Secondly, they also do not have to pay sales tax against sale of such unbilled drugs.

However, such hawkers have stopped their business in the market since the raids started on Monday.

Another aspect of the medicine market is, there is always shortage ofsome emergency drugs like Paxum, Clampose, Prostodin, Fortben, Ketaminand others. Those involved in duplicate drug business take benefit of the situation and get some of the drugs manufactured locally therebyplaying with the life of serious patients. Not only this, theseduplicate medicines are sold at higher price too, the source said.