Command hospital orders probe

Major General Shamsher Singh,as per allegations of the PIL,had been placing supply orders with R K Distributors for purchase of four to seven tablets of DASATINIB to avoid seeking permission from his seniors. Significantly,R K Distributors in its affidavit filed in the High Court on Thursday admitted that it had received five separate supply orders from the Command Hospital for supply Sprycel on a single day.

However,the company has submitted that it had supplied them an entire bottle containing 60 tablets,against the order for 57 tablets. The petitioner has claimed that a bottle,containing 60 tablets,costs around Rs 1,67,000. He also claimed that individual tablets of the medicine cannot be sold but the Command Hospital had been placing orders and had been procuring it from the market. R K Distributors has also submitted that it used to purchase the cancer medicine from the open market at one-third of the maximum retail price.

“The reply filed by R K Distributors clearly reveals that they purchased the drug at one-third of the MRP but used to sell it to the hospital at the actual MRP,thereby making huge profits. There are only three patients in Command Hospital who require cancer medicine,” advocate H C Arora,counsel for the petitioner,told Newsline.

The distributor also stated that Command Hospital has approved four other chemists for supply of the cancer drug,although none of them is the approved stockist of Bristol Myers Squibbs,the pharmaceutical company manufacturing the medicine. Significantly,Bristol Myers Squibbs had on the last date of hearing submitted that R K Distributors is not its authorised agent.

The company claimed that it had written two letters to Command Hospital,Chandimandir,on March 25 and April 15,2009 stating clearly that Sprycel cannot be sold in the open market and that R K Distributors,Industrial Area,Phase I,Chandigarh,was never its authorised distributor. 

It had issued a legal notice to R K Distributors on February 8,asking the latter to immediately stop representing itself as an “authorised” distributor for the company and inform the company the source from which it had procured the medicine for supply to the Command Hospital. Army authorities,in their reply to the court,have stated that they had earlier inquired into similar complaints but did not find any irregularity in the purchase of medicine. An inquiry will now be conducted.

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