Maharashtra FDA has decided to bring all the prosecution cases filed against the drug companies for making spurious and substandard drugs and pending in lower courts into 30 district courts in the state. There are 2142 prosecution cases pending at hundreds of lower courts at taluka levels in the state and some of them have been pending for the last 20 years. \r\nThe Maharashtra FDA is extremely unhappy over the snail's pace at which the prosecution cases are disposed of by the courts in the state. Against a total of 2142 pending cases, a mere 25 cases were disposed of during the last three years by the courts in the state. Most of these cases are pending in the lower courts. By transferring all these cases to the district courts, the FDA is intending to speed up the disposal of the cases.\r\nEvery year, the FDA files around 200 prosecution cases all over the state. During the last 3 years, the Maharashtra FDA has filed 550 such cases against drug manufacturers for manufacturing substandard drugs. But, due to very slow disposal of these cases, the number of pending cases continued to pile up in different courts of the state. There are 46 cases which have been waiting for a court decision for about 20 years. \r\nIn order to thrash out the issue of speedy disposal of these cases, the Maharashtra FDA had some time back organized a workshop stressing on the need for the expeditious disposal of the cases. Mumbai High Court Judge Ranjana Desai, judicial magistrates, government prosecutors and FDA officials participated in the workshop. \r\nThe FDA collects random samples from different parts of the state for testing. It mostly collects samples from sources like government and private hospitals, retail chemists, wholesalers and doctors who dispense medicines through their dispensaries. Sources said that most of the sample medicines were drawn from the hospitals, especially the government-run hospitals, as government hospitals are considered to be the breeding ground for such substandard medicines. \r\nAfter collecting the samples, the FDA would send the sample drugs to its testing laboratories in Mumbai and Aurangabad. And the FDA initiates prosecution against the manufacturers whose samples are found to contain less than 70 per cent of the active ingredients. \r\n |
