Global Post reports,"How an Indian entrepreneur is helping to resist executions in the US," by Mandakini Gahlot. Here's the beginning:
In 2010, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services sent an email to a small, unknown, Indian pharmaceutical company in Mumbai, Kayem Pharmaceuticals. Navneet Verma, 54, the company's owner, was overjoyed: “I was happy to have the opportunity to do business with the United States,” he recalls.
The department in Nebraska was looking for sodium thiopental — an anesthetic — considered one of the world's "essential drugs" by the World Health Organization.
At the time Verma’s company was already supplying sodium thiopental to Angola, and the offer from the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) was an opportunity to boost revenue.
“I offered the drug to the Nebraska prison at approximately $2 a vial," he says. "It was profitable for me as I was spending less than a dollar to manufacture it. I knew it was going to a prison but I did not know why.”
What Verma was unaware of was that sodium thiopental was the top choice among three drugs commonly used in lethal injections for death row prisoners in the United States. The NDCS commissioned 500 vials of the drug from Verma's company.
Earlier coverage of the Nebraska drugs begins at the link. Related posts are in the international category index.
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