The on Monday upheld the ’s (NPPA) decision to recover Rs 4.65 crore including interest towards by Sun Pharmaceuticals for , a brand of a Cloxacillin-based drug formulation, under the provisions of the Drugs (Price Control) Order 1995 ( ). The issue before the apex court was whether the NPPA was justified in demanding Rs 4.
65 crore with interest in February 2005 from the pharma major towards recovering the higher price than what was fixed by the government under the DPCO for the drug formulation between April 1996 to July 2003. While rejecting the Sun Pharmaceuticals’ appeal challenging the demand order, a Bench led by Justice Sanjay Kumar said that “given its own inconsistent versions and in the absence of a firm factual foundation being built up by with proper documentation as to its status, it was not open to it to baldly claim that it was not a ‘distributor’ but only a ‘dealer’.” “Sun Pharma presently has played both roles.
However, that would not be sufficient to exclude the appellant from the ambit of Paragraph 13 of the DPCO, the intent and purpose of which is to control the prices at which medicinal drug formulations are made available to the common man by holding out the threat of recovery of the higher prices charged for such drug formulations by those involved in their manufacture and marketing,” it said. It noted that the Delhi High Court “undertook the exercise of piercing the corporate veil and found, on facts, that there was overlapping an.
