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Special committee to inspect Industrial unit from next week to check banned contrabands
The Pune District NCORD is headed by Pune district collector Suhas Diwase while Pankaj Deshmukh, superintendent of Pune Rural Police will be the member secretary of NCORD
A special committee appointed under the Narco Coordination Centre (NCORD) will start inspections of all Industrial units in Pune district to check if banned contrabands are manufactured under the disguise of other drugs or products, said the officials. The decision comes following the incident wherein a banned mephedrone (MD) drug worth ₹3,676 crore was seized from Pune, Delhi and Sangli last month which was allegedly found manufactured at a pharmaceutical manufacturing unit in Kurkumbh MIDC.
The Pune District NCORD is headed by Pune district collector Suhas Diwase while Pankaj Deshmukh, superintendent of Pune Rural Police will be the member secretary of NCORD. The NCORD team also includes officials from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), MIDC, MPCB and the Industrial Association amongst others.
A meeting was held earlier this week during which all stakeholders were called to discuss the action plan. The team will work under the district NCORD to check if any industry is manufacturing banned contrabands, the officials said.
Deshmukh said, the inspections of all the units, closed, operational and sick units will be started from next week across the districts. “We will check if banned contrabands are manufactured by any other industrial units similar to what was found in the manufacturing unit of Kurkumbh. Shockingly even before the Kurkumbh incident, we had checked over 51 Industrial units which were closed but nothing was found.”
Similar incidents have been reported in the past in the Pune district in which mephedrone was found manufactured under the disguise of chemical and drug factories in Purandar and Kurkumbh. To identify and unearth such industries the committee will inspect and conduct surveillance of all industrial units. This time the inspection will include all industries across the districts.
Deshmukh informed all departments would coordinate with each other to conduct surveillance and take action against such industrial units manufacturing banned drugs under the pretext of chemicals, drugs or any other products.
S V Pratapwar, assistant commissioner of FDA, Pune region, said, earlier we inspected over 51 pharmaceutical units with the Pune Rural Police, but no unit was found involved in manufacturing banned drugs.
“All these drugs were sick units and susceptible to fall for lucrative illegal activities given the financial issues. However, the Kurkumbh unit was functional and was not inspected and it was an unregistered unit. We will team up with the committee and inspect all Pharmacy units,” he said.
Ravindra Andhale, regional officer, MPCB, Pune Region, said, as part of the committee we will inspect all Industrial Units and check if anyone is found involved in manufacturing illegal drugs or contrabands.
“In such cases, we will immediately issue closure notices to such units. However, during the inspection we will also see if the units are functioning in compliance with the pollution control norms,” Andhale said.
