Kasauli lab flags fake Abhayrab vials seized in a Delhi house

The Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli has declared a set of Abhayrab rabies vaccine vials "not of standard quality" and "misbranded" after they failed a potency test. The vials carried batch number KE25012 and were seized on 22 April from an unlicensed house in Mukherjee Nagar, Delhi, during a joint raid by the Delhi Police Crime Branch and the Delhi Drugs Control Department.

Indian Immunologicals Limited, which makes Abhayrab at its Human Biologicals Institute and holds about 40 percent of the domestic rabies vaccine market, says the seized vials were not its product. The genuine KE25012 batch passed company testing and was released on 7 November 2025. The laboratory said the questioned vials differed from reference samples in packaging, labelling, artwork, QR-code verification, cap colour and licence details.

CDSCO said on 5 September that Delhi Police have arrested four people and that no part of the genuine batch was exported. The Drugs Controller General of India wrote to all state drugs controllers on 27 August telling them to watch the movement of KE25012. IIL filed a representation with CDSCO on 4 September asking the agency to trace the source.

A second scare in two years

This is not the first time Abhayrab has appeared in a counterfeit file. On 13 January 2025 IIL asked CDSCO to investigate vials labelled as batch KA24014 that the company said were being sold in Ahmedabad, Delhi, Lucknow and Mumbai. Drug regulators in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States issued public alerts on that earlier batch between October and December 2025.

Rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms start. Post-exposure vaccine, given on time and at full potency, is the difference between a course of injections and a death. A vial that looks right and fails a potency test is worse than an empty box. Clinics that used the Mukherjee Nagar stock would have recorded a batch number that matches a real release and a product that does not.

What clinics should do now

State controllers have been told to keep a watch on KE25012. Hospitals and private clinics should check QR codes against the manufacturer's verification system, not against a printed batch number alone. Cap colour and artwork mismatches were among the laboratory's findings. Those are checks a pharmacist can make without waiting for Kasauli.

CDSCO's public notice said agencies are trying to break the supply chain, not only seize a house. Four arrests after an April raid and a September notice is a slow clock for a vaccine that cannot be recalled from a dog-bite patient who already received it. The missing fact in the public file is how many vials left Mukherjee Nagar before 22 April and which cities received them. Until that distribution map exists, the alert is national and the confirmed seizure is local.

IIL's second complaint in two years is a signal that the brand is being copied because it is trusted. That is the commercial logic of a counterfeit. The medical logic is simpler. If a vial fails potency, it does not raise an antibody titre. For rabies, that failure has no second chance.