AUBURN – More than six months after he was first accused of giving prescription drugs to addicts, former Rite Aid pharmacist Robert M. Holcomb was indicted by a grand jury.

The 25-year-old Sabattus man was indicted on two counts of unlawful furnishing drugs and two counts of stealing drugs from the Rite Aid on Union Street.

Holcomb was arrested by undercover drug agents in late March after a drug addict came forward to tell police she had been getting painkillers from the pharmacist at the drug store.

When he was arrested, Holcomb claimed he doled out the painkiller Vicodin on the job because he felt bad for people who are addicted, an investigator said.

“We got information that addicts were coming into the store and getting drugs without prescriptions,” Maine Drug Enforcement Agency Supervisor Gerry Baril said the night of the arrest. “They would put an empty drug bottle on the counter and this pharmacist would fill it.”

Police said Holcomb was illegally dispensing 5- to 7-milligram dosages of Vicodin from the Union Street pharmacy. It was when one of those customers was taken to the hospital after an overdose that the investigation began.

“It was a near-fatal overdose,” Baril said. “And we were able to work with that recovering addict as part of the investigation.”

Agents from the MDEA and other departments worked on the case for roughly a week before the Rite Aid was raided.

According to a police affidavit, undercover agents observed Holcomb as he handed vials of Vicodin to a confidential informant who had no prescription. The informant was secretly wired to record conversations with Holcomb, according to police reports.

Police and drug agents approached Holcomb at the pharmacy counter in the early evening March 31. He was questioned for about a half-hour before he was led out of the store in handcuffs.

Inspectors from the state’s Department of Professional and Financial Regulation examined the inventory of medication at the Rite Aid following the raid. Investigators said thousands of pills, including Vicodin and other painkillers, were missing from the stock.

The criminal case against Holcomb is being prosecuted in Androscoggin County Superior Court. However, federal court officials are still mulling civil charges against him stemming from the theft of drugs.

Holcomb, at a May court hearing in 8th District Court in Lewiston, pleaded innocent to the charges against him. He has remained free since.

At the time of his arrest, Holcomb listed an address of 50 Timberlake Road in Sabattus. He is originally from Binghamton, N.Y., and went to school in that state. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday about the case.