Fraudulent pharmaceutical importer given 19 years RI

By T. Farook Thajudeen 

A pharmaceutical importer who distributed banned goods under popular trade names was handed a sentence of 19 years rigorous imprisonment suspended for 10 years by the Colombo High Court yesterday. 

High Court Judge Padmini N. Ranawake imposed the sentence on the convict Junaideen Ahamed Riyas for attempting to import a banned eye drop to the country using forged documents and by misleading the Cosmetic Devices and Drugs Regulatory Authority (CDDA), which was then the authority overseeing all medicines and cosmetics and medical devices sold in the country. 

The convict was indicted on 10 charges and a sentence of two years rigorous imprisonment was imposed for each of the nine charges. He was further sentenced to one year of rigorous imprisonment on the tenth charge while being ordered to pay a fine of Rs. 6,050,000 for all ten charges. 

It was revealed that in 1993 the convict had forged documents to import a drug deemed harmful for human use and banned by the CDDA. The use of the drug would have caused grave and irreparable damage to any user. The convict attempted to import the banned eye drop using the names of Sussex Medical Ltd. and Harcourt Pharmaceuticals, two well-known pharmaceutical companies operating in Sri Lanka.