Punjab: Chemist shot for denying habit-forming drug to patient

The chemist tried to explain to him the restrictions imposed on providing habit-forming drugs sans prescription. However, the miscreants fired at him instead and fled from the spot.

Ludhiana: In a shocking incident, a city-based chemist paid a heavy price for refusing to provide a habit-forming drug to a customer, who shot the chemist for his rebuttal.

In 2017, the Government had notified a list of 46 habit-forming anti-biotics, anti -TB and other such drugs like diazepam sleeping pills not to be freely available at a chemist shop. The chemists were further directed to record the names and addresses of prescriber and buyer of all such drugs in a separate register. However, with the recent incident, it seems a challenge to curb the misuse of addictive drugs.

The incident took place on October 5 2019, (Saturday) around 8:30 at night. The chemist identified as Mathleshwar runs a chemist shop at Eastman Chowk in Dhandari Kalan. The chemist was in his shop when two people arrived there and started quarrelling with the chemist for refusing to give the habit-forming drug to one of their known person, who arrived at his medical store earlier.

The miscreants started threatening the chemist of dreadful consequences if he denied giving them the drugs. During the course, the chemist tried to explain to him the restrictions imposed on providing habit-forming drugs sans prescription. However, the miscreants fired at him instead and fled from the spot.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that reacting to the illegal practice of selling habit-forming drugs by the chemists and indulging in general violation of guidelines issued to run a chemist shop, the Punjab government had suspended the licence of 1000 chemist shops in a span of 10 months.

Also Read: Punjab Govt suspends the licence of 1000 chemists for violation of guidelines

The injured chemist was admitted to a hospital in Ludhiana. A case against the unidentified assailants has been registered with the Sahnewal police, reports The Tribune.