BHUBANESWAR: The City Police on Friday tracked down a godown at Baramunda area here to where Eastern India Pharmaceutical Laboratory, now in the eye of the liquor tragedy storm, had moved over 1,500 bottles of alcohol-based medicinal formulations. The seizure came after arrest of Bhagirathi Mishra, the marketing manager of the firm. Mishra, during interrogation by the police, revealed that his employer SN Rath had asked him to move the stock to the godown as soon as reports of the deaths tricked in on Tuesday. Rath is already in police custody. During the raid on the godown, the Commissionerate Police came across 800-odd plastic bottles and another 700-plus glass bottles which contained Epeecarm. Since the Excise officials had found similar plastic bottles of Epeecarm from vendor Baidhar Bhoi’s Tukulipada home after Tuesday’s raid, police strongly suspect that pharmaceutical firm was the manufacturer. “We believe there is no other player involved in the circulation of the alcohol- based medicinal formulations. It is this Rasulgarh-based firm which is behind it,” official sources said. Since two kinds of bottles __ plastic and glass __ were found during the raids after the liquor deaths, there were confusion in the minds of investigators about role of other spurious concoction producers but now police suspect that the promoters of Eastern India Pharmaceutical Laboratory had deliberately created such a situation. “When the Rasulgarh factory was raided on Tuesday and Wednesday by Excise and police respectively, only glass bottles were seized. The manufacturer had deliberately placed these containers to mislead police and create a defence for themselves,” the police sources pointed out. During investigation, police found that the firm had placed order for 20,000 plastic bottles with a Bhubaneswar-based supplier while placing order for 28,000 caps (lids) with a Cuttack-based firm. Similarly, it had also placed order for labels with a Bhubaneswar-based unit which indicates that it was planning manufacturing in a big way. Meanwhile, Biswanath Mallick, a driver of the drug manufacturing firm, was also arrested by police from Soro area of Balasore. He allegedly had delivered the consignments in Cuttack Sadar area. Both Mishra and Mallick will be produced in a local court on Saturday.
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