While authorities in Maharashtra are busy curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus, some unscrupulous elements, who are looking to make a fast buck by selling substandard hand wash products and sanitisers, have come under the scanner of the state's health regulator. Acting against such elements, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has launched a crackdown on home-grown units which manufacture substandard hand wash and sanitisers and push them into the local market, an official said.

The FDA has seized such products worth lakhs during raids on local manufacturing units in western suburbs in the last few days, he said. On Wednesday, an FDA team, inspecting medical stores in suburban Kandivali, found a person selling hand sanitisers to a shop owner, an official said. "FDA officials caught hold of the man as they found that the sanitiser being sold by him had been manufactured without licence. They took him to the supplier in Kandivali, where they recovered sanitiser stock worth Rs 1.5 lakh," he said.