GURUGRAM: A Japanese medical equipment maker was booked by Gurugram police on the directions of a court on Saturday for allegedly inflating product price and distributing under the name of an unregistered importer.
According to a probe by the drug controller, the firm declared an MRP of Rs 9,500 for the product – a guidewire used in catheters and surgical procedures – to the authorities, but in the market, the product’s label carried Rs 10,000 as MRP (the samples were collected from the market by the drug controller). Based on data available with the department, the purported overcharged amount for the product was Rs 6.16 crore.
On June 10, during the inspection of a hospital by the drug controller, another product – a guiding catheter – was found with a label of another company as an importer. Its MRP on the label was Rs 8,000, though, according to the drug controller, the company had declared an MRP of Rs 7,450. The drug controller held this as a violation of The Drugs (Prices Control) Order 2013. A complaint was submitted to police by the Food & Drugs Administration in Gurugram in June after an opinion from the district attorney was taken, but no FIR was lodged.
Sharad Mehrotra, president of the Chemist Association of Gurugram, approached a local court last week and additional session judge Ashwani Kumar on Friday directed an FIR to be registered. “In view of the facts coupled with voluminous documents which have been enclosed with the complaint, this court finds that without proper investigation, justice cannot be done in this case for which loading the FIR is prerequisite,” said the court order. TOI reached out to the company for a comment but did not receive a response. A case was registered at Sadar police station on Saturday under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 467 (fraud), 468 and 471 (forgery) of the IPC and sections of Prevention of Corruption Act against the company, its authorised signatory and sales head.
