The Central Bureau of Investigation may move against a number of leading pharma companies, which had allegedly violated DPCO, under the Economic Offences Rules. National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority had discussions in this regard with CBI to take up cases of companies which have violated DPCO provisions by floating small scale units to take advantage of exemption of price control.

The CBI had this week filed a case in the Girgaum Court in Mumbai against the directors of the healthcare major Johnson and Johnson on charge of Economic Offense by way of cheating the public by violating DPCO. The CBI case against Johnson & Johnson was that the company was manufacturing scheduled drugs in the name of N R Jet Enterprises, a small scale industry unit owned and controlled by the former, to evade the DPCO and thereby cheat the public to the tune of Rs 45.33 crore.

Earlier, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) had pulled up the company for DPCO violation and had ordered to pay Rs 38 crore following a probe into alleged overpricing of a tablet branded as Raricap during the period from April, 1997 to December, 2001.

According to Pradip Mehta, member secretary, NPPA, there will be close coordination between the Authority and the CBI in cases where the drug price violations and thereby public cheating are found. "The J & J case was also referred to CBI by the NPPA earlier. In future also cases like this will be dealt with in the same manner, " he said.

However, the J & J spokesperson informed that the company directors are yet to receive the official information in regard to the CBI case. While commenting about the reported Court case filed by the CBI, the company spokesperson said, "We have been cooperating fully with government agencies regarding the matter discussed in several recent news media reports. But we disagree with the characterization of our activities in several of these news reports and we are confident that these issues will be satisfactorily resolved."