Maharashtra FDA raids Snapdeal office in Mumbai

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Mumbai: The food and drug administration (FDA) department of the Maharashtra government raided the premises of online marketplace Snapdeal at Goregaon in Mumbai for selling prescription drugs on Thursday, according to a statement issued by the FDA on Friday.
The state body has asked the company to remove deals on such drugs from the website.
FDA commissioner Harshdeep Kamble received a specific complaint that prescription drugs such as Ascoril cough syrup and Vigora tablets were being sold through the website, said the statement.
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http://www.livemint.com/Companies/D...htra-FDA-raids-Snapdeal-office-in-Mumbai.html
 
Good. They have way overstepped their limits when they put up prescription medicines and potentially dangerous medicines for sale and the hammer needs to be brought down heavily for that.

Still its amusing how the govt wants these e-coms' to act only as a platform in order to avail FDI, but will still want to treat them as retailers to get taxes and when applying various laws to stick them.

Also, its weird that FDA took action so promptly when Snapdeal is involved and against snapdeal top executives considering all one needs to do is go to their nearest medical shop to get any prescription medicines without the prescription.
Also, what about the retailers/wholesalers supplying them. No news whether they are also going to be booked?
 
Lord Nemesis said:
Also, its weird that FDA took action so promptly when Snapdeal is involved and against snapdeal top executives considering all one needs to do is go to their nearest medical shop to get any prescription medicines without the prescription.
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May be they thought Snapdeal would make them "happy"
 
There are many sellers on Amazon too who are selling fat reducing ointments and tablets. And whey protein. I'm guessing many of those whey protein supplements have unknown steroids in them.
 
Slamming "ham-handed enforcement" action against e-commerce major Snapdeal for online sale of prescription drugs, former Union Minister Sachin Pilottoday said the move goes against the government's stated position of promoting businesses and home-grown entrepreneurs.

Pilot also said that the action against Snapdeal and its top management was "akin to holding highway builders responsible for lane violations", while the real perpetrators are freely peddling drugs of dubious nature.

The comments from the Congress leader, who was Minister for Corporate Affairs in the previous UPA government, follows Maharashtra's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clamping down on Snapdeal with filing of FIR against the e-retailer's CEO Kunal Bahland other top management personnel for alleged online sale of prescription drugs

http://economictimes.com/industry/s...eal-to-hurt-business/articleshow/47138126.cms
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^^ Regardless of the political intent, he does have a point. The police is quick to register a case against snapdeal top brass, but are we forgetting that snapdeal is primarily a marketplace for sellers? I don't see anything about the action taken against the actual sellers and suppliers. I understand that snapdeal may be selling the stuff through its own retailer, but the question in that case is what about the suppliers and is the brass same for that in house retailer. For instance WS Retail on Flipkart is a separate entity from Flipkart. If the actual suppliers and sellers are being left alone in this case, then I can only conclude that FDA is doing somebody else's bidding.

Furthermore, I don't like this trend of cases being registered and action being taken against CEO's and other top executives. Maybe in some cases, negligence can be pinned down onto to the top brass of a company and appropriately cases registered, but in many cases, its not the case. Maybe in this case, there is enough justification if they are the people who signed the deal with the suppliers.

Still, when uber incident came into the limelight, the police was looking at the possibility of booking the Uber executives in India as co-conspirators for the rape just in order to cover their own fault of handing out police verification certificates in return for bribes. This is a really new bad trend that is emerging. Harass the top executives when ever some worker of theirs misbehaves. If this is justified, then I would like the same to be applied to political parties as well. Lets there be cases against a parties top brass like Modi, Sonia/Rahul, AK whenever their party workers indulge in violence or vandalism. If a govt employee commits a crime, then the respective CM and PM at the time should be booked a co conspirators to the crime.
 
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Lord Nemesis said:
^^. The police is quick to register a case against snapdeal top brass, but are we forgetting that snapdeal is primarily a marketplace for sellers? I don't see anything about the action taken against the actual sellers and suppliers. I understand that snapdeal may be selling the stuff through its own retailer, but the question in that case is what about the suppliers and is the brass same for that in house retailer. For instance WS Retail on Flipkart is a separate entity from Flipkart. If the actual suppliers and sellers are being left alone in this case, then I can only conclude that FDA is doing somebody else's bidding.
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As per Drugs and Cosmetics Act everybody in the supply chain will be booked. It's illegal to sell medicines without prescription/licence to sell and stock medicine.
 
^^ Yes, its illegal and everybody in the chain needs to be booked. But I see no news about that? What are they waiting for. They already have procession of all the records from snapdeal.
 
Snapdeal case: Cops to summon courier officials

A day after the police recorded the statement of a pharmacist, who had complained to the state food and drug administration against e-commerce portal Snapdeal for "supplying prescription drugs", the police said on Sunday that they would record the statement of the courier agency which had "delivered" the drugs to the complainant's Panvel residence.

Prescription drugs cannot be sold over the counter (OTC) without a doctor's prescription.

Senior police inspector Bajirao Bhosale said, "We will record statements of all those who are linked with Snapdeal in selling the non-OTC drugs without the doctor's prescription. We have summoned the courier agency's authorized person."

Bhosale said they would also probe the role of pharma firms accused of selling non-OTC drugs on Snapdeal. He said the five pharma companies have licences to produce the drugs but have no retailing licences for those products.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...on-courier-officials/articleshow/47143449.cms
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^^ This is exactly what I was talking about. Cases already registered against the top brass of snapdeal which is just a market place, but only a supposed "probe" to be initiated against the pharma companies which are doing actual supplying and selling. Similarly, absolutely nothing against every one of the gazillion pharma shops all over India which also sell prescription medicines without the prescriptions. I have yet to see a medical shop which asks for a prescription for any medicine that they sell. If anything, I have seen prescription medicines being given to people who go ask medicines for such and such symptoms with the pharmacists themselves playing doctors..
 
Lord Nemesis said:
^^ Regardless of the political intent, he does have a point. The police is quick to register a case against snapdeal top brass, but are we forgetting that snapdeal is primarily a marketplace for sellers? I don't see anything about the action taken against the actual sellers and suppliers. I understand that snapdeal may be selling the stuff through its own retailer, but the question in that case is what about the suppliers and is the brass same for that in house retailer. For instance WS Retail on Flipkart is a separate entity from Flipkart. If the actual suppliers and sellers are being left alone in this case, then I can only conclude that FDA is doing somebody else's bidding.

Furthermore, I don't like this trend of cases being registered and action being taken against CEO's and other top executives. Maybe in some cases, negligence can be pinned down onto to the top brass of a company and appropriately cases registered, but in many cases, its not the case. Maybe in this case, there is enough justification if they are the people who signed the deal with the suppliers.

Still, when uber incident came into the limelight, the police was looking at the possibility of booking the Uber executives in India as co-conspirators for the rape just in order to cover their own fault of handing out police verification certificates in return for bribes. This is a really new bad trend that is emerging. Harass the top executives when ever some worker of theirs misbehaves. If this is justified, then I would like the same to be applied to political parties as well. Lets there be cases against a parties top brass like Modi, Sonia/Rahul, AK whenever their party workers indulge in violence or vandalism. If a govt employee commits a crime, then the respective CM and PM at the time should be booked a co conspirators to the crime.
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As you said, it is highly probably that Pilot's comments are more political in nature. It is basically a Witch-hunt now.
 
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