Six years, ‘lost’ documents, litigation fatigue: The hopelessness of public health advocacy in India

On January 14, I withdrew a petition that I filed six years ago in October 2018 before the Delhi High Court questioning the continued sale of three drugs whose initial approvals by the Drug Controller General of India have been under a cloud of suspicion for over a decade now. My decision to withdraw the petition was driven primarily out of sheer litigation fatigue. This petition was listed no less than 24 times before the Delhi High Court over the last six years with no substantial arguments taking place on any of the issues that I raised before court.

The origins of this petition lie in the findings of the 59th Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health, tabled before Parliament on May 8, 2012, excoriating the Central Drug Standards Control Organisation on a number of issues. One that featured prominently was the manner in which the drug regulator had approved new drugs despite the lack of adequate clinical evidence that they demonstrated therapeutic efficacy claimed by their manufacturers.

The other issue that shocked the committee was the fact that approval files for certain drugs that it sought to investigate were missing from the CDSCO. These included the fixed dose combination of Flupentixol and…

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