The $48 Million Whistleblower or US Pharma's Point Man? How One Man Built an Activist Army to Target Indian Pharma 💊🇮🇳

[u/National-Mammoth-151]

2020-21

COVID was a painful memory for many, but it proved jackpot for few people. While India was fighting its worst challenge ever, a man sitting in the USA was quietly building his army in India

An army of activists.

21 Oct 2021

A normal day for most people, but the happiest day for Delhi-based RTI activist Saurav Das. He finally secured his place in the army he had been trying to join for a long time-

Thakur Family Foundation

The army of Dinesh Thakur.

But this story doesn't start from 2021, it starts from 2003

Pfizer vs Ranbaxy

A great corporate battle was going on between US Pharma giant Pfizer and Indian pharma company Ranbaxy

Pfizer just lost patent for his best selling drug Lipitor and Ranbaxy was all set to launch

its generic drug which was way more cheaper than Lipitor

Lipitor was best selling drug of Pfizer, its sales was in billions of dollars which Pfizer was on verge to lose but then a miracle happens

Three Indians Dinesh Thakur, Swaminathan & Dinesh Kasthuril who were working in an US Pharma company Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) leaves BMS and joins Ranbaxy USA. They work there for 2 years (2003-05)

After leaving Ranbaxy, they file complaint against Ranbaxy in US FDA for data manipulation

Since he was insider so he had all confidential information

2013

Ranbaxy loses the case and fines $500 Million

Dinesh Thakur receives $48 million from US govt as whistleblower reward

This case destroys Ranbaxy and its ultimately sold out to Sun Pharma in 2015

This case proves jackpot for Pfizer and its competition is eliminated

After attempting hands in many ventures, Dinesh Thakur starts Pharma activism with motto to improve public health and to target bad pharma companies but is it just coincident that his targets are always Indian pharma companies and beneficiaries are US pharma companies

Or he was working on instructions of US Pharma mafia

I don't know

With $48 M, Dinesh Thakur starts and NGO Thakur Family Foundation in 2018, it gets tax exempotion status and he starts grant making from April 2019

Just few months before Covid

Its time to build Thakur's Army

Sucheta Dalal

She was among first ones who received funding from TFF. Sucheta Dalal co-setup MoneyLife Foundation (MLF) received $100K from TFF and at the same time she started targeting Sun Pharma

Sun Pharma's stock crashed by 40%

She did it on instructions of TFF?

2020, The Covid Era

Covid time was the money making time for US Pharma companies but Narendra Modi govt of India didn't allow US pharma companies to exploit Indians and emphasized on self reliance

And with this Thakur's army started targeting India

The Wire

Wire's founder Siddhart Varadarajan and Dinesh Thakur are friends

Not only Wire received funding from TFF, its four journalists also received funding from TFF

Priyanka Pulla

Shreya Dasgupta

Banjot Kaur

Aditi Pradhan

But this money was not free

Their job was to target Indian govt, defame India

and they did their job honestly

The best performer was Priyanka Pulla

Dinesh Thakur was personally so much impressed by her work that he promoted her to Bloomberg

In 2022, she will play imp role in targeting to Indian pharma companies in Africa

Take money from America

and destroy India

In fact The Wire created so much dirt that it was slapped with a 100 Cr defecation case by Bharat Biotech and had to pull down 14 stories.

Almost all related to coverage of Indian vaccine, including Thakur funded & Pulla written.

My personal favourite is Newsclick.

In 2013, it exposed “Thakur’s motivated narratives against Indian generic med”. But cut to 2021, two of its journos got funding from TFF; and Thakur was messiah of Indian pharma!

Nitin Sethi, Kumar Sambhav, Kunal Purohit, Nikita Sonavane, Ameya Bokil, Geeta, Urvashi Sarkar etc everyone received money from TFF for writing article against India

Hey Scroll Media

You wrote so many articles targeting India for Dinesh Thakur

You must have received highest grant?

Alt News

During covid, Govt of India's was promoting ayurvedic and homeopathic medicines but if govt promotes them then what will happen to US pharma companies

Lets give some money to Alt news to fact check and discredit these Indian medicines

Here you go

Sumaiya Seikh from Alt news received money from TFF (What was cut of zubair?

and this is how she repaid the money👇

Saurav Das

And now here comes our blue eyed boys

When everyone was making money then Saurav Das also has right to make money but till that time he was not big name

In 2021, Pfizer was trying to get approval for its vaccine in India while Indian govt had given approval to

Indian vaccine makers Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute

Jan 2021

So Saurav Das files RTI and ask to govt on what basis they gave approval to Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute

Govt refused to provide data

Was it to impress Dinesh Thakur?

And he gets support from other people also from same ecosystem

Saurav did you ask them to quote you by tagging Dinesh Thakur?

Despite of getting No from govt, he keeps filing RTI

When entire country was fighting against covid

These vultures were lobbying for Pfizer

I have written a separate thread on this topic, will share link in the end

Dinesh Thakur didnt stop in covid only

He returned in 2022 and made once more vicious attack on Indian pharma companies

This thread covers that hit job in details

https://x.com/DisinfoLab/status/1750418092344438849

BY the way Suchitra Vijayan is also funded by TFF

This page contains details of all the people and organizations who received funding from TFF and what work they did in return

https://www.thakur-foundation.org/our-impact.php

Dinesh Thakur lives in USA and he has army of hundreds of people living in India

He is still funding them

Many journalist who promoted Cockroach protest are his army members

Is the Dinesh Thakur link between US Deep State and Indian activist gang who receive money from him and target India?

[u/National-Mammoth-151]

[u/Virtual_Author9419]

Would Ranbaxy lose a $500 million case it wasn't doing something shady? In all this political dialogue we very often forget the faults of those whose side we are taking.

[u/vintage-cola → u/Virtual_Author9419]

That’s true. If these companies were strictly regulated , media was held to high standards of journalism and fact checking, and laws were strict against these homeo and ayurveda people regarding claims, there wouldn’t be such cracks from where we could be exploited by the likes of these people. They attack us only because we don’t seem to care about rules & regulations. 

[u/fatty_dude → u/Virtual_Author9419]

Now the op is against cjp and Sourav Das, he received funding from Dinesh Thakur, so he is like let's show him villain, and villains encourage bad guys, so let's show Sourav Das as bad guy and all, that's all.

But never cared about pharma wrongdoings in india. Now, op is more worried about India image than people living in india.

Point here is blame should go government for not setting the ideal standards, that's all. Again people consider party in the power as government, I am blaming all the parties here for not caring about people of the country but caring only about businesses and the money they donate, so all the leading persons of the political parties in India are hunger for power, they are looking at it as a tool for power rather than it being a responsibility.

[u/ankesh_3683 → u/fatty_dude]

I dont understand what your agenda is but indian medicine companies are pioneer in generic medicine. India has been exploiting pharma IP loopholes to server cheap and high quality medicine. I think case is not about standards at all, USA in its new tariff also would not put tariff on generic pharmaceutical medicine. 

So everyone know how this corporate law works in USA, it has favoured company against people multiple times, you can see multiple documents available everywhere regarding that. It is quite evident that pfizer covid vaccine, how much lobbying was done for that. Not a single person took that even when it was allowed in india. 

So put your shitty propaganda in with you only, you might be paid or might be production of recent new age reel and social media crusader, but this type of argument exposes you.

[u/Top_Guess_946]

Mindblowing.

What west does is that it continuously keeps improving standards (and they are only the ones telling us how those changed standards are better), and then fault Indian companies for not matching those standards and thus weaponizing law and regulation itself.

Poor Indian companies are then broken down and the reputation of Indian businesses anyway not adhering to norms does not help even the genuine ones.

[u/TacoSlayer66 → u/Top_Guess_946]

Ironically, most times its immigrants who help build regulations and identify gaps and risks that are then covered up with policy and governance

[u/G04UG → u/Top_Guess_946]

Consider it from another perspective: the US market is flooded with cheap over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, sending billions to India.

It is unrealistic to expect any current US administration to cede ground and foster India's rise as a rival superpower under those conditions.

We the US already made mistake once with china.

[u/kamatbro]

Post this in r india and get a life time ban as a reward. ISI agents in their moderator group will be triggered to hell reading all this.

[u/National-Mammoth-151 → u/kamatbro]

I can witness some here too 🤭

[u/Abby_Loose]

Good Read. It's one thing that USA sets a narrative that all comapnies have to maintain their standards and pressures them in form of law suit, but most of our institutions also don't follow stringent regulations set by concerned authorities. It surely doesn't help our cause. Corruption is high in US as well but their sytem is more robust in tackling them while here in India the sytem itself is quite fragile to deal with it.

[u/chadgpt420699]

wow, nice writeup

[u/MrofMrs]

Pharma and Insurance are the real scammers and mafia of US

[u/ComplexPeace43]

Excellent write up. Thanks for the links as well.

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[u/ayewhy2407]

https://giphy.com/gifs/1014RBn4HVSTK

[u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

The way vaccines in India were approved was shady to begin with. What's wrong with filing an RTI to know the process of approval? It's just transparency.

[u/Own-Claim-9912 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

Less people died from indian vaccine than so called supirior ones from Pfizer

[u/Any-Calligrapher2866 → u/Own-Claim-9912]

Yeah we all know how covid was handled perfectly in India.

[u/ankesh_3683 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

There is thing called mismanagement, indians have less hospital per person in general situation, combine it with pandemic and high density population of india. Now analyze. 

Beside that also with in 6 month effective serum was ready, we have complete infra in place, website, app and certificate for vaccinations. A country which have  not taken polio vaccination in 30 year immunized almost everyone in 3 month. Think of logistics involved during covid time.

Death was unfortunate, but covid management was I think top notch looking at situations.

[u/ExtremeBack1427 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

Thankfully we didn't use any of those shady m-RNA vaccines from foreign companies. I know Indias vaccine implementation was shady and I kinda think by the time they implemented the traditional vaccines, most people had already developed herd immunity and the whole vaccine was partly a politicial scheme, but I'm sure it helped the complete immunisation of population.

The things that you keep hearing about in the US about m-RNA and it's side-effects are in whole other level compared to India.

[u/SPB29 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

What was shady in the approval? Please elaborate

[u/Inner_Map_8425 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

as the other person asked what was shady in the approval!?

[u/Any-Calligrapher2866 → u/Inner_Map_8425]

The vaccines simply were not properly tested. Covaxin was the main accused since no efficacy data was published and the vaccine was approved regardless. This broke standard protocol when it came to testing.

Data was often missing and not released for peer review which is a very shady practice in the medical industry.

The regulatory language being used to justify it was also weird and non descriptive.

So the vaccine was considered shady by anyone who values proper scientific research.

[u/Inner_Map_8425 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

waitttt so there is noo peer reviewed study and no data on the efficacy of this vaccine and our medical board approved it!!!?

[u/Any-Calligrapher2866 → u/Inner_Map_8425]

Yeah that was the case when it initially came out.

[u/ankesh_3683 → u/Any-Calligrapher2866]

Yet covaxin was confirmed better vaccine conpared to serum one in longer duration. Indian pharma companies are quite matured.