On Tuesday, police arrested four former employees of a city-based pharmaceutical company for allegedly stealing data from the firm and using it to manufacture drugs illegally at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.

The police took action on a complaint by a senior executive of the company, which produces bulk drugs and pharma products in Visakhapatnam and in other cities. Their technology is their intellectual property, but it was stolen and used by another firm to manufacture few products. A release from Cyberabad Police Commissionerate said that a case was registered.

Police said that investigations exposed that the prime accused, who was a Business Development Manager in the company, was fired on the charge of malpractices after which he had a grudge against the firm and its sister concerns and their management.

He then made a plan and tempted the other three workers with very well-paid job offers in his unit, following which they allegedly shared confidential data with the prime accused who started manufacturing the products at Visakhapatnam.

Police said that the accused, who collected data relating to Batch Production Control Records, Specification, Certificate of Analysis, Standard Testing Procedure, Raw Data of the drugs were arrested from different places.

Source: ET Healthworld