By T N Ashok
The Maharashtra FDA commissioner has become the state’s most visible enforcement officer, raiding restaurants, seizing adulterated food and taking on a major pharmaceutical company. But the Bombay High Court has now delivered a warning of its own: having the power to act is one thing; exercising it judiciously is another.
There are bureaucrats who learn to navigate the system. And then there is Tukaram Haribhau Mundhe. For more than two decades, the Maharashtra cadre IAS officer has acquired a reputation for doing something that can be distinctly uncomfortable in Indian administration: reading the rule book literally.
He appears to be the Real Life Singham (Ajay Devgan) that Rohit Shetty created on screen — the no nonsense reel life IPS officer who took on the might of the mafia in Mumbai and Goa.
That habit has made him popular with citizens, unpopular with some politicians, feared by sections of the business community and, perhaps most remarkably, transferred again and again 25 times at that, still counting.
His latest battlefield is the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration, where he took charge as commissioner in May 2026. Within weeks, the FDA had become one of the state’s most visible enforcement agencies. By July 20, it had carried out 1,131 inspections, seized food stocks worth ₹49.57 crore and suspended the licences of 56 restaurants. Among those facing action were iconic establishments including K Rustom, Noor Mohammadi, Shalimar and Parsi Dairy Farm.
Mundhe’s message was blunt: food safety was not a suggestion. But his most consequential confrontation was not with a roadside eatery. It was with Cadila Pharmaceuticals, one of India’s major pharmaceutical companies. And that battle has now taken an unexpected turn in the Bombay High Court.
The dispute began with four medicines: Aciloc 150, Aciloc 300, Aciloc 150 Plus and Aciloc 300 Plus. The FDA’s concern was not that the medicines were necessarily contaminated or therapeutically worthless. It was the similarity in branding.
The older Aciloc 150 and Aciloc 300 contained ranitidine. The newer “Plus” versions contained famotidine. Yet the packaging and branding were substantially similar, apart from the addition of the ‘+’ symbol. Mundhe’s FDA argued that having products with different active ingredients marketed under nearly identical names could create the possibility of medication errors — a doctor, pharmacist or patient could potentially confuse one medicine for another.
That, in the regulator’s view, was a public-health risk. On July 9 and 10, FDA teams inspected Cadila’s carrying-and-forwarding warehouses in Pune, Nagpur and Bhiwandi. Stocks worth ₹2.45 crore were seized. The FDA ordered recalls of the four products and stopped the sale and distribution of the two newer variants.
Mundhe’s argument was quintessentially Mundhe: when public health is involved, compliance with rules governing drug branding, labelling and marketing cannot be treated casually. Then Cadila went to court.
On August 11, the Bombay High Court gave Mundhe something he is not accustomed to receiving — a very public lesson in the limits of enforcement. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Ravindra V. Ghuge and Justice Gautam A. Ankhad questioned the manner in which the FDA had exercised its powers.
The court made an important distinction. It did not say that the FDA lacked regulatory authority. Quite the opposite. The judges acknowledged that the regulator had powers. Their objection was to the manner in which those powers had been deployed.
The court’s most memorable description was devastatingly colourful. The FDA, it said, had a “sword”, but was using it to “kill a mosquito.” And then came the line likely to follow Mundhe and the FDA for years: “Shooting first and asking questions later is a rule of the Wild West which does not apply in the arena of law.”
The court was particularly concerned that the medicines had been kept off the market for an extended period. The bench noted that one drug had effectively remained unavailable to patients for 32 days. That changed the equation. This was no longer simply about Cadila’s commercial loss. It was about patients who might need the medicine.
The FDA subsequently agreed to revoke its earlier stop-sale orders, issue show-cause notices, hear Cadila’s response and then, if warranted, pass fresh and reasoned orders. The petition was disposed of on that basis. In other words, the court did not endorse Cadila’s branding practices. It insisted that due process must accompany enforcement.
And that is where the Mundhe story becomes considerably more interesting than the usual “honest officer versus big business” narrative.
Mundhe was born into a farming family in Tadsonna village in Maharashtra’s drought-prone Beed district. His father, Haribhau Mundhe, was a marginal farmer. His mother, Asarabai, managed the household through difficult financial circumstances. Mundhe studied in a Zilla Parishad school and worked on the family farm before and after school.
The son of a small farmer eventually made it to the country’s most competitive administrative examination. In the 2004 UPSC examination he secured All India Rank 20, joining the IAS as a 2005-batch Maharashtra cadre officer. His career subsequently took him through Nanded, Washim, Jalna, Solapur, Navi Mumbai, Nashik, Nagpur and Pune, among other assignments.
But the postings are less revealing than the pattern.
By 2026, various accounts put the number at 24 or 25 transfers in 21 years. The exact count varies depending on whether particular changes in assignment are counted separately, but the extraordinary frequency is not in dispute.
The FDA appointment itself came after another extraordinary episode. In March he was transferred to the relief and rehabilitation department, but that appointment was subsequently cancelled and he was placed on compulsory waiting. After a period without a regular assignment, he was finally sent to the FDA.
For a conventional bureaucrat, such a career would be exhausting. For Mundhe, it has become almost part of the legend.
His reputation was forged well before restaurants and medicines. As Solapur Collector, he became associated with water-conservation work under the Jalyukt Shivar programme and earned the sobriquet “Waterman of Maharashtra.” He was also recognised with the state’s Best District Collector Award for 2015-16.
In Navi Mumbai, he went after unauthorised constructions, hoardings and property-tax defaults and introduced early-morning inspections. Citizens applauded. Politicians complained.
In 2016, a no-confidence motion was brought against him by the NCP, Congress and Shiv Sena. Then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis intervened and stayed the resolution, arguing that an officer should not be penalised for exposing irregularities.
The pattern repeated in Nashik, Pune and Nagpur. As municipal commissioner, he acquired a reputation for surprise inspections and direct confrontation with civic dysfunction. As health commissioner, his surprise hospital inspections and attendance measures again generated both support and resistance.
The common thread was simple: Mundhe did not seem particularly interested in whether an order would make him popular.
That personality may explain why the FDA has become Mundhe’s natural habitat. The department’s official motto under his tenure has effectively become: safe food, safe drugs, safe Maharashtra. The crackdown has ranged from adulterated milk and paneer to edible oil, gutkha and unhygienic restaurants.
The numbers are striking. The FDA has carried out more than a thousand inspections in weeks. It has seized large quantities of allegedly adulterated food, suspended restaurant licences and intensified laboratory testing.
Mundhe has also targeted famous names — establishments that ordinary inspectors might conceivably have been reluctant to touch because of their reputation, political connections or sheer longevity.
That has made him a social-media hero. But it has also exposed the central weakness in the Mundhe model. Enforcement is not the same thing as administration. His supporters see an officer finally doing what regulators are supposed to do. His critics argue that he can be too quick, too uncompromising and insufficiently consultative.
The Indian Express found that even people who praised his integrity questioned his methods, arguing that administration requires dialogue as well as enforcement. That criticism has now acquired judicial weight.
There is something almost paradoxical about the Cadila episode. The FDA’s underlying concern — preventing medication errors — is hardly frivolous. A medicine’s name and packaging matter. Confusion between drugs with different active ingredients can potentially cause harm. The regulator was therefore acting from a legitimate public-health anxiety.
But the High Court has reminded the regulator that good intentions do not suspend due process. That distinction matters enormously. A public official can be morally convinced that he is protecting citizens and still cross a procedural line.
And an enforcement agency can have perfectly legitimate statutory powers and still exercise them disproportionately. The Bombay High Court’s message was therefore not simply a rebuke to Mundhe. It was a lesson in constitutional administration:
Power must be used lawfully, proportionately and after hearing the other side. For an officer whose career has been built around the conviction that rules are rules, that may be an especially important lesson.
Mundhe has now become something larger than an IAS officer. To admirers, he represents the bureaucrat India keeps saying it wants: incorruptible, fearless, inaccessible to political pressure and prepared to take on the powerful.
To critics, he represents the danger of an administrator who believes enforcement itself is reform. Both descriptions contain a measure of truth.
His 25 transfers do not automatically prove that he was victimised by politicians. Nor do they prove that every decision he took was correct. Transfers can result from political pressure, administrative requirements, personality clashes, policy disagreements or routine restructuring.
But the persistence of the pattern is striking. And so is the public reaction. When Mundhe was threatened with another possible transfer, politicians across party lines — including some who had previously criticised him — publicly supported giving him a longer tenure. The FDA minister said there was no immediate proposal to transfer him.
That is perhaps the strongest testament to his unusual place in Maharashtra’s bureaucracy. He may irritate politicians. He may terrify restaurateurs. He may provoke pharmaceutical companies. He may occasionally overreach. But he has succeeded in doing something most bureaucrats rarely achieve: he has made the rule book visible.
The Cadila case now serves as the counterpoint. Rules must be enforced — but they must also be enforced properly. Mundhe’s great strength may be his refusal to look away. His great challenge, as the Bombay High Court has just made clear, is learning when to stop, listen and then act.
For a man who has spent 21 years refusing to bend, that may prove the hardest rule of all. When to cross the line and when not to step outside the line. (IPA Service)
