Photo Courtesy: nenow
Agartala: The Tripura High Court axed a criminal case against M/s Innova Captab and its directors. Justice Biswajit Palit threw out the prosecution after finding officials ignored key laws. The company faced charges over a drug sample labeled as not of standard quality. The sample consisted of Rabeprazole Sodium and Itopride capsules.
Authorities seized the batch at an Agartala medicine shop on January 29, 2021. The Regional Drugs Testing Laboratory in Guwahati later failed the product in an assay test. The court identified a chain of procedural blunders. Officials did not send the sample to the analyst immediately. It arrived at the lab on February 1, 2021. No one explained the delay.
Rules demand test reports within 60 days. The lab finished its report on October 12, 2021. That is over eight months late. The court noted the government never asked for a legal extension to cover this gap. The Centre blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of a government analyst for the lag. Justice Palit rejected these excuses.
The court clarified that Supreme Court pandemic extensions applied only to court filings, not lab deadlines. Prosecutors also failed to follow Section 25 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. They never gave the firm a chance to fight the results before charging them. The judge stated, "mandatory procedural safeguards under the Act had not been followed, rendering the prosecution legally unsustainable." All criminal charges are now void.
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