Snapdeal In Trouble For Selling Drugs? Police Raids Mumbai Premises!

In a recent incidence, the food and drug administration (FDA) department of the Maharashtra government raided the premises of the Delhi-based online marketplace Snapdeal at Goregaon in Mumbai for selling prescription drugs. The organisation has further, asked the company to remove the listing of such drugs from the website.

The raid was carried out on April 16 at Jasper Infotech Goregaon (west), where Snapdeal office is located.

The FDA commissioner Harshdeep Kamble had received complaint that prescription drugs such as Ascoril cough syrup and Vigora tablets were being sold through the website. Moving ahead, the FDA, raided the Snapdeal premises and seized all the documents regarding the drug sales such as agreements with vendors and delivery challans to customers.

According to the FDA officials, they are also raiding Snapdeal’s warehouses to confiscate drugs stored there.

As per the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940 Sec. 18 (C), Rule 65, “only a licensed retailer can sell prescription drugs and that too after verifying the prescription given by a medical practitioner.”

Well not just Snapdeal, to check the sale of such drugs the FDA is also checking out the other online retailers such as Flipkart and Amazon on whether they are also listing these kind of drugs or not.

While scrolling through few ecommerce marketplaces, we found that Amazon and Shopclues has listed Vigora on their websites.

“We are still in process of ascertaining since when Snapdeal was selling these prescription drugs, what was its volume of business among other things and depending upon this, quantum of penalty and further action will depend,” said Kamble.

A Snapdeal spokesperson said that they removed all such products from the website “provided all information to the FDA team.”

As usual, this time too, Snapdeal made statement, “Snapdeal acts as an intermediary between the seller and buyer of the products listed on the platform.” It further added, “Though we periodically educate sellers on engaging in fair and safe sales on the platform and consequences of selling inappropriate products, at times sellers end up listing such products.

Snapdeal has been asked to furnish details of persons, the medical stores and companies involved and documents such as agreements, invoices, payment details, etc.

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