MUMBAI: Expressing anxiety at the “disastrous effect on public health due to trafficking in illicit drugs” the Bombay High Court has taken Taj Pharmaceuticals to task. Hearing a trademark violation plea by leading pharma company Emcure last month, the HC initially directed a court receiver to attach Taj Pharma ’s properties. To prevent property seizure, two of the company’s directors undertook not to “export any pharmaceutical preparation of any nature, till the court decides.” The matter has now been posted for April 20 for final disposal.Emcure Pharma had moved the HC against Taj Pharma for trademark violations on a drug made in India to treat brain tumour. It charged the Mumbai-based company with sending out completely counterfeit and illicit versions of BICNU-branded drugs made by Emcure, to overseas hospitals. The Taj directors Sudheer Singh and ‘Dr’ Ranvir Kumar denied the allegation. But Justice Gautam Patel in his order passed on March 30, said, “I find it hard to believe a word these gentlemen say.” The judge also said that documents tendered by their lawyer J S Chandnani “inspire no confidence”.Raz Pharmaceuticals, an Israel-based company and a regular customer of Emcure, called it in February to confirm if the cancer drugs it bought from Taj were indeed made by Emcure under its BICNU brand, after it suspected something amiss, Emcure counsels Birendra Saraf and Hitesh Jain told court. Emcure said the drugs were fake and the batch numbers of the “proprietary” drugs, which are “sensitive and need to be stored at specific temperatures”, didn’t match. The spurious drugs , made in India, were shipped from Ireland by Taj. Saraf also informed the court that “pharmaceutical majors such as Cipla had also alleged that Taj Pharmaceuticals is manufacturing spurious and counterfeit products”.The judge said what is more important at the moment is not the trademark violation or financial losses to Emcure, but public safety. Saraf also said the Emcure’s main concern too at this stage was “to prevent any harm to patients who may get the fake drugs”. The judge made it clear to Chandnani, who pleaded that there should be no seizure of property, that “the anxiety is only that spurious drugs should not enter the market.”Justice Patel observed: “Two batches of spurious BICNU-branded products were sent to hospices in Switzerland and Israel. Their use was stopped in the nick of time; a catastrophe was narrowly averted. What is of consequence is this trafficking in illicit drugs, especially in the export market...We are concerned here with a complex pharmaceutical preparation. This is known as a Carmustine injection. It is prescribed and used for patients who are critically ill with certain types of cancer, lymphomas and brain tumours. Wrongly administered, they are known to result in almost certain fatalities.” Emcure’s version under the mark BICNU is sold in foreign markets alone. Another brand name is used for different formulations for domestic use in India.Taj told the the HC that it has a “US FDA-approved factory in Khalapur,” among other units “at Berlin Canada, Dubai, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Moscow and Switzerland”.“There is almost nothing claimed by the defendants (Taj and its directors) that is in the least credible. Its claims on its websites are untrue by its own admission. It does not have world-class facilities. It does not have a presence overseas. It almost certainly does not have any sort of turnover in euros, let alone a quarter of a billion euros. Its denials of having offered to sell BICNU-branded products to Raz Pharmaceuticals are prima facie incorrect. Of its so-called corporate philosophy, the less said the better,” said the court order.