Gurgaon man who made, sold fake weight-loss drug masked brand as ‘Japanese’

GURGAON: The man accused of making fake Mounjaro injections from a city flat was not just copying the weight-loss drug. According to police, he was also pushing his own unapproved brand, ‘Toneup’, while disguising it as a Japanese product to make it look credible and imported.The probe has found that Avi Sharma allegedly ran two parallel operations from a flat in Sector 62 — one to produce counterfeit vials resembling Mounjaro, and another to sell tirzepatide-based injections under the Toneup label through online listings.Drug control authorities have now recalled 22 Toneup-labelled injections after tracing sales to customers in Delhi, Hyderabad and other cities. Officials said no pharmaceutical company called Toneup exists in Japan and alleged that the branding was meant to mislead buyers.“There is no brand in Japan called Toneup. He was labelling it to look like a Japanese brand. This brand has no approval from any authority, and these injections were never tested. Anyone who has them should not use them at all,” district drug control officer Amandeep Chauhan said.According to officials, Sharma had prepared several Toneup vials in the flat and sold them online through IndiaMART for Rs 11,000 to Rs 18,000. Chauhan said two customers had already used the injections, but no adverse reaction was reported in them so far. “We have recalled 22 Toneup injections. Two people had used it, but they are alright,” he added.The racket came to light on April 18, when drug control authorities and police intercepted a vehicle near Super Mart-1 and seized 262 suspected fake injections worth around Rs 70 lakh. The probe then led officials to flat 605 of a residential society in Sector 62, where a crude manufacturing and packaging unit had been set up.“His lab was just one room with a refrigerator and a deep freezer. He used Google, ChatGPT and YouTube to learn how to make injections,” Chauhan said.Officials said Sharma sourced research-grade tirzepatide, cartridges and injection pens online, while raw material was procured from China through Alibaba. He allegedly used 3D printing to make cartons, labels and instruction leaflets resembling imported products. During inspection, officials found differences in colour, typography, text alignment and pen illustrations. “These discrepancies clearly showed that the product was not genuine,” Chauhan said.Sharma and his associate, Mujammil Khan, were arrested after the raid and are in judicial custody till May 22. All seized samples, including the recalled Toneup injections, have been sent for laboratory testing and analysis.Eli Lilly and Company (India) spokesperson said, "We have been made aware of a recent development in relation to the seizure of a suspicious and counterfeit products that allegedly carry our product brand name Mounjaro (Tirzepatide). The said seizure resulted from an enforcement drive conducted in Gurugram by officials from the state drugs regulatory authority, Haryana. Lilly takes patient safety extremely seriously and welcomes regulatory authority’s action against illicit medicines. We are actively supporting the investigation and will continue to work with regulatory and law enforcement authorities worldwide to protect patients from the risks of counterfeit products. Stronger, coordinated enforcement must be sustained if we are to protect patients from unsafe fake medicines.”