Dinesh Thakur: A public health activist who blew whistle in Ranbaxy quality compromised case

Many of us know this fact that compromised in quality of medicines might be life threatening to patients. And it is very hard to detect substandard or counterfeit medicines without help of laboratory test. We can't blame patients if they are purchasing substandard medicines from medical store. It is responsibility of our drug regulatory body to assure quality on regular basis to prevent some serious health hazards. There are many fraud these pharmaceutical giants are doing now a days for vested interest. Ranbaxy a pharmaceutical giant was very familiar name not only in India but in US also. Ranbaxy was popular because of it's economic products and domination on generic market. Dinesh Thakur, the famous whistle blower who highlighted data manipulation issues in Ranbaxy ( Now Ranbaxy is part of Sun pharma ) says that our country i.e. India needs strict criminal prosecution against manufacturers of substandard and counterfeit medicines, a nationwide product recall system and more teeth to the central drug administration ( CDSCO). Dinesh Thakur in his report title "Fixing India’s broken drug regulatory framework" states that Indian drug regulatory body has many loopholes. Corrupt drug regulators are in collusion with industry and India's pharmaceutical companies has deep culture of corruption.

Let me introduce you about Dinesh Thakur, who get $48.6 million from US government for uncovered the unsafe practices and violations of GMP at Ranbaxy.

Dinesh S. Thakur is a public health activist who trying to improving the quality of medicines across the world. He currently focus on improvement in health policy in the United States and in India as well. He is a proffesional and accomplished entrepreneurship in pharmaceuticals, biomedical product development, drug regulation, and information technology. He was named Whistleblower of the Year by Tax payers against Fraud in 2013.

During years 2003-2005, Mr. Thakur was the Director of Research Information & Portfolio Management at Ranbaxy, Which was India’s largest generic medicine manufacturer. He was responsible for managing research and development information for generic drug development, manufacturing, and commercial operations. He implemented automated systems to capture research and development data for global regulatory submissions, compliance, and manufacturing.

During his tenure at Ranbaxy, Mr. Thakur found that Ranbaxy was manupulating drug data and violating cGMP and GLP. He resigned over there in 2005 after exposing the fraud to company management, and worked with authorities for eight years to unravel the complicated trail of manupulated records and unsafe manufacturing practices. In May 2013, Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to multiple criminal activities and agreed to pay $500 million to resolve criminal and civil allegations of manupulated drug data and manufacturing violations of cGMP resulting in substandard and unsafe drugs. This ground breaking settlement was the largest of its kind against a generic drug manufacturer.

Dinesh Thakur completed his Bachelors degree in Technology from Osmania University, and Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from University of New Hampshire, and graduate training from Syracuse University.