Pharmaceutical importer to appeal 19-year RI sentence

A pharmaceutical importer who was handed a 19-year rigorous imprisonment sentence suspended for 10 years by the Colombo High Court on Thursday is to file a petition in the Court of Appeal against the judgment that was handed down by the High Courts. 

The pharmaceutical importer was charged and convicted of distributing banned goods under popular trade names. 

High Court Judge Padmini N. Ranawake imposed the sentence on Junaideen Ahamed Riyas for attempting to import a banned eye drop to the country using forged documents and by misleading the Cosmetic Devices and Drugs Regulatory Authority (CDDA), which was then the authority overseeing all medicines and cosmetics and medical devices sold in the country. 

Riyas was indicted on 10 charges and a sentence of two years rigorous imprisonment was imposed for each of the nine charges. He was further sentenced to one year of rigorous imprisonment on the tenth charge while being ordered to pay a fine of Rs. 6,050,000 for all 10 charges. 

It was revealed during the trial that in 1993 Riyas had forged documents to import a drug deemed harmful for human use and banned by the CDDA. The use of the drug would have caused grave and irreparable damage to any user. The Judge heard of the attempt to import the banned eye drop using the names of Sussex Medical Ltd. and Harcourt Pharmaceuticals, two well-known pharmaceutical companies operating in Sri Lanka.