A rabies vaccine is supposed to be one of the products a consumer never has to second-guess. Yet India’s drug regulator has now flagged a batch of widely used Abhayrab after a government laboratory found that it failed a potency test and raised questions over whether the product was genuine.

The Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli classified a field sample of Abhayrab batch KE25012 as “not of standard quality” after it failed to meet potency requirements. More troublingly, the laboratory found significant differences between the sample it tested and a retained reference sample of the same vaccine, including discrepancies in labelling, artwork, QR-code verification, cap colour, licence details and packaging text.

The sample did pass tests for sterility, moisture and identity, but the discrepancies were enough for the regulator to question its “identity and authenticity” and investigate whether it could be a spurious drug under India’s Drugs and Cosmetics Act. On August 27, Drugs Controller General Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi directed state drug regulators to maintain strict vigilance over the movement and distribution of the batch.

That makes this more than a routine quality-control failure. Abhayrab is used for both pre- and post-exposure protection against rabies, including after suspected exposure to an infected animal.

And because rabies is almost invariably fatal once clinical symptoms appear, the purpose of the vaccine is not simply to treat an illness but to prevent a potentially fatal one from taking hold.

The regulator’s document does not establish how many doses from the flagged batch reached consumers, whether any were exported or whether anyone was harmed. But the fact that a vaccine sample can fail a potency test while also showing signs that prompt questions about whether it is even the product it claims to be points to a much larger problem: what happens when the product itself cannot be taken at face value?

This Isn’t The First Abhayrab Warning

The latest finding is particularly troubling because Abhayrab has already been at the centre of a counterfeit-vaccine alert. In January 2025, Indian Immunologicals informed the drug regulator about a fake version of the vaccine carrying batch number KA24014. The company said the counterfeit product had packaging different from the genuine vaccine and that it had alerted regulators and law-enforcement agencies.

The episode later travelled beyond India’s borders. Health authorities in Australia and the UK issued guidance for people who may have received Abhayrab in India, warning that those given the counterfeit batch might not have been adequately protected against rabies. Australia’s advisory said people who received the affected batch, or whose vaccine details were unknown, should consult healthcare providers about replacement doses.

Indian Immunologicals, however, maintained that the problem was limited to one counterfeit batch and said it was no longer available for sale. The company also stressed that the affected product was not manufactured by it.

That distinction matters. The earlier case involved a counterfeit product, while the latest government finding concerns a field sample from batch KE25012 that failed potency requirements and showed discrepancies from the retained reference sample. They are separate incidents and should not be treated as one continuing batch problem.

But together, they raise an uncomfortable question about how a product that is supposed to be tightly controlled can become difficult to authenticate once it enters the market and that question becomes even more important when the product is a vaccine.

Step Back From The Medicine Cabinet

The uncomfortable part is that the Abhayrab case does not arrive in isolation. In recent weeks, food-safety raids across India have repeatedly uncovered products that were adulterated, expired, relabelled or otherwise being prepared for sale in ways that could leave consumers with little idea of what was actually inside the packet.

In Hyderabad, for instance, authorities seized more than 11,000 kg of food products during raids on two units in August. Police alleged that spices were being adulterated and that expired products were being repacked with fresh dates. Chilli powder was allegedly found mixed with sawdust, while other spices were being processed with food colours to make them resemble established brands.

Then came a more elaborate operation in Navi Mumbai. Between August 24 and 29, Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration and the Navi Mumbai Police raided a facility in Turbhe and seized thousands of cartons of packaged food worth more than ₹75 lakh. Investigators alleged that original manufacturing and expiry dates were being erased and replaced with freshly printed information.

The products included familiar names such as Lay’s, Kurkure, Maggi, Knorr, Thums Up and Limca, among others. Officials also found new stickers being placed over original ingredient and nutritional-information labels on some products. The investigation is now looking beyond the warehouse itself at the exporters and supply network connected to the stock.

None of this establishes that the brands themselves were responsible for the alleged tampering. What the raids do show, however, is how easily a branded product can become part of a questionable supply chain after it has left the manufacturer’s hands.

And that is where the story starts becoming bigger than food adulteration. The problem is not only what is being put into a product; it is also what can be changed, removed or concealed before that product reaches the consumer.
When food itself cannot be trusted

Spices are perhaps the easiest place to see how this works because adulteration does not always require sophisticated technology or a complicated supply chain. An inferior or entirely different material can be added to a familiar product, its colour and appearance adjusted, and the finished packet can still look perfectly ordinary on a shop shelf.

The larger concern, then, is not simply that some traders are cutting corners. It is that the final checkpoint in this entire chain is often the person with the least ability to verify what is actually being sold to them.

When Expired Products Get A Second Life

If adulterating a product changes what is inside it, repackaging an expired product changes something even more basic: how long the consumer is told it is safe to use.

The most unsettling part of some of these cases is not simply that an old or adulterated product may be sold again. It is that the information meant to help a consumer judge the product can also be changed – what happens when the information attached to a product changes depending on where it is being sold?

Export markets can have their own labelling and ingredient requirements, but when original information is deliberately erased or concealed rather than transparently updated, the consumer (whether in India or abroad) is left relying on a label whose history they cannot see.

That is the weakness of a system built around packaging as proof. A manufacturing date, expiry date, ingredient list, QR code, licence number or brand logo is supposed to provide a chain of reassurance. If those details can be removed and replaced somewhere between the factory and the final market, the consumer is effectively being asked to trust a piece of printed paper that may have passed through several hands.

And this is where the phrase grey market starts to mean more than simply goods being sold outside an authorised distribution network. It describes an environment in which the journey of a product becomes increasingly difficult to trace and where the person making the final purchase has the least visibility into what happened along the way.

India’s grey market is bigger than one raid

None of these cases, on their own, proves that India has one giant underground market operating across food, consumer goods and medicines. The products are different, the operators are different and the investigations are being conducted by different agencies. But there is a common vulnerability running through them: once products move outside the tightly controlled part of the supply chain, it can become surprisingly difficult to know what happened to them.

This is what makes the grey market problem particularly difficult to deal with. It does not necessarily operate in one obvious place. It can sit between manufacturers and distributors, inside warehouses, through unauthorised traders, in wholesale markets or through channels that make products difficult to trace back to their original source.

India has regulations governing food safety, drug quality, labelling and distribution, as well as agencies responsible for enforcing them. The problem exposed by these raids is the gap between those rules and what can happen on the ground when enforcement fails to catch a product before it reaches the next stage of the chain.

And consumers generally see only the final stage. They see a familiar logo, a sealed packet, a printed date and a price. They do not see the warehouse where the product was stored, the trader who handled it, the label that may have been removed or the route it took before arriving on the shelf.

That is why the issue is bigger than adulteration. It is ultimately about traceability – and how much of it survives by the time a product reaches the person expected to consume it.

The consumer is the last person in the chain

For all the regulation built around food, medicines and packaged products, the consumer remains the weakest link when something goes wrong. A manufacturer can test a batch. A regulator can inspect a facility. An enforcement team can seize a consignment. But the person standing in a shop or ordering online is generally left with the packet in front of them and whatever information it carries.

For years, the grey-market conversation has largely been associated with fake luxury goods, electronics, food and other consumer products.

When questions of authenticity begin appearing around a product whose effectiveness can determine whether someone survives a rabies exposure, the consequences of that same supply-chain weakness suddenly look very different.

What We Know, And What We Don’t

It is important not to turn a series of enforcement cases into proof of a single, nationwide operation. The Abhayrab investigation, the food raids and the cases involving relabelled or repackaged goods involve different products and different allegations. What connects them is the vulnerability they expose, not necessarily the people behind them.

In the Abhayrab case, the government document establishes that a field sample from batch KE25012 failed the potency requirement and that the Central Drugs Laboratory found significant differences from a retained reference sample. The regulator has asked state authorities to keep watch over the batch and investigate whether the sample could be spurious.

What the document does not tell us is equally important.

It does not say how many doses from the batch entered the market, where those doses went, whether any were administered to patients or whether the batch was exported. It also does not establish that anyone was harmed.

The same caution applies to the wider examples. The recent raids show what authorities say they have uncovered at particular premises, but allegations against individual operators should not automatically be extended to the manufacturers whose brands appear on the seized products. A branded packet found in an unauthorised facility does not, by itself, establish that the brand owner participated in the alleged manipulation.

But caution should not obscure the underlying problem either.

Across these cases, authorities are repeatedly having to intervene after products have already entered parts of the supply chain where their authenticity, age or contents can be manipulated. By then, the consumer is often the last person to know that anything was wrong.

And that leaves the most important question hanging over the Abhayrab case: how far can a product travel before anyone realises that what is inside the package may no longer be what the package says it is?

The Last Bit, The Uncomfortable Question

The Abhayrab case is not evidence that everything sold in India is unsafe. Nor do the recent food raids mean that every branded packet on a shop shelf has passed through the grey market. But taken together, these incidents point to a question that is much harder to dismiss: how much can an ordinary consumer actually verify about a product before consuming it?

The consumer is expected to trust the systems behind the product – the manufacturer, distributor, retailer, regulator and the information printed on the package. Most of the time, that trust is unavoidable. There is no practical way for a household to independently test every packet of turmeric, every bottle of medicine or every vaccine before it is used.

That makes enforcement particularly important. The real protection is supposed to happen before the product reaches the consumer, not after the consumer has already bought it.

The government document on Abhayrab does not tell us whether anyone received a faulty dose, and the investigation may ultimately establish that the suspect sample was an isolated case.

But the fact that a widely used rabies vaccine has now entered a regulatory investigation over potency and authenticity comes at a time when raids elsewhere are exposing other ways in which products can be altered or pushed back into circulation.

Perhaps that is the most worrying part of the story. The question is no longer simply whether India has a problem with adulterated food or counterfeit goods. It is whether the systems meant to tell consumers what they are buying are strong enough to ensure that the product in their hands is actually what it claims to be.