Mumbai: FDA lodges complaint after e-commerce portal sells abortion pill without prescription

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has registered a case with the Nehru Nagar police after finding that an e-commerce portal was delivering abortion drugs to patients without a prescription. It is the third case registered by the FDA in Mumbai and Thane in the past few weeks.

The complainant in the case is Rajesh Bankar, who works as food inspector at FDA, which had received information about an online application that allegedly sold abortion pills through their platform.

On March 29, Bankar placed an order for pills from two different companies on the said online platform, without providing a doctor’s prescription. On April 4, he received the delivery at his home.

The medicine packet mentioned that it should be used as directed by the physician. The kit falls in the ‘Schedule H’ category under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and Rules, 1945, and its sales are prohibited without a prescription.

The drug label also states that it should be used under the supervision of a service provider and at a medical facility as specified under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act 2002, and MTP Rules, 2003. However, the seller has violated all these guidelines.

Last month, the Thane FDA had lodged a police complaint against an ecommerce portal for selling abortion pills online without prescriptions. A senior FDA official himself ordered the pills without any prescriptions and the e-commerce website delivered the medicine to his home.

Published on: Thursday, May 05, 2022, 08:54 AM IST