Man given 10 years in spurious medicine case

KARACHI, June 2: The drugs court on Thursday sentenced a man to one year in prison in a case pertaining to the stocking of unauthorised and spurious medicines.

The court found Mohammad Feroz guilty of stocking unauthorised, misbranded, substandard and spurious medicines for sale in the Denso Hall area in September 2010.

The accused also failed to produce the drugs sale licence.

The three-member drugs court headed by its chairman Saathi M. Ishaq also ordered the accused to pay a fine of Rs100,000 and in case of default he would have to undergo an additional three-month imprisonment.

According to the prosecution, a drugs inspector raided a medical store and warehouse in the Denso Hall area on Sept 2, 2010 and seized substandard, spurious and unauthorised drugs. The accused was arrested and booked under the Drugs Act, 1976. He was later produced in court.

After the pronouncement of the verdict, the convict was sent to prison along with his conviction warrant to serve out the remainder of his sentence.—Staff Reporter

Rs20m ‘social innovation fund’ launched

THE Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA) announced on Thursday the launch of a Rs20 million fund “to drive social innovation in the country”.

“We are certain that we will be able to get some creative juices flowing, spark the beginnings of a few unique solutions, finance some great ideas and provide mentoring to young people who have the passion, the talent and the motivation to make a social impact on our society,” said Jehan Ara, president of P@SHA, says a press release.

The initial seed money for this fund has been provided to P@SHA by Google Inc as a grant.

“As the fund proves its worth, there is a likelihood of more organisations adding to it,” said Ms Ara.

Badar Khushnood, country consultant for Google in Pakistan, said the grant was to support social entrepreneurship and innovation and was a natural follow-up to the $1 million that Google had provided to Pakistan as part of the flood relief effort.