Telangana’s drug enforcement authority has issued show-cause notices to 125 medical shops for alleged violations in the sale and dispensing of habit-forming medicines across the CURE region and other districts of the state.
The Telangana Standards Authority for Food and Essential Drugs (TG SAFE) issued the notices after raids by its drugs wing and enforcement wing police personnel. The operations covered medical shops in the Medchal and Serilingampally zones as well as locations in several districts.
Officials focused on the alleged indiscriminate sale of medicines including Tramadol, Alprazolam, Nitrazepam, Tapentadol and Zolpidem tablets. The enforcement teams also examined the sale of Codeine-containing cough syrups and Pregabalin-containing formulations, all of which can be subject to prescription and record-keeping controls.
According to TG SAFE, its teams used decoy operations and test purchases to verify whether medical shops were dispensing the medicines without adequate controls. The inspections detected alleged sales without prescriptions issued by registered medical practitioners, as well as failures to maintain prescription-drug registers and Schedule H1 drug registers.
The authority also reported cases in which prescription medicines were allegedly dispensed without a registered pharmacist being present. Other violations included selling drugs without issuing bills, failing to maintain or produce sales bills, failing to produce purchase bills and irregularities in maintaining copies of sales and purchase records.
The notices begin departmental proceedings against the medical shops. TG SAFE said the action could include suspension or cancellation of drug licences, depending on the findings of the proceedings.
The enforcement action places record-keeping and pharmacist availability alongside prescription compliance as key points of regulatory scrutiny. For residents, these controls determine whether medicines with potential for dependence or misuse are supplied through the formal pharmacy system and whether transactions can be traced through prescriptions, purchase records and sales bills.
The raids also show the enforcement approach being used by the state authority: inspections were combined with police personnel, decoy operations and test purchases rather than relying only on routine checks of shop records. The supplied report does not specify the individual pharmacies, the quantities of medicines involved, or the deadlines for responses to the show-cause notices.
The next stage will be the departmental examination of the explanations submitted by the 125 medical shops. TG SAFE will determine whether the alleged violations warrant penalties, including suspension or cancellation of the relevant drug licences.
