NEW DELHI: Faced with whopping cost of medicines for treating his ailing mother, a law intern today moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to ban hospitals and their in-house pharmacies from compelling patients to mandatorily buy medicines from them at inflated prices.
The top court agreed to examine the plea jointly filed by the law student and his advocate father, alleging that the prices of medicines, medical devices and medical consumables were inflated in collaboration and connivance with the drug manufacturers.
A bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao issued notice and sought reply from Centre and all states on the matter in four weeks.
Advocate Vijay Pal Dalmia, the joint petitioner with son Siddharth Dalmia, appeared in person and said by taking advantage of the ignorance, their plight and adverse circumstances of the patients in hospitals across India, people were being compelled to buy medicines from there or their in-house pharmacies. (AGENCIES)