New Delhi, May 14 -- After facing American scrutiny over quality issues, India's pharmaceutical industry has again landed in the crosshairs of US regulatory action. Forty-four US states have together sued 20 drugmakers, seven of them Indian, for the alleged fixing of generic drug prices at levels higher than what the market would set. Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the world's largest producer of generic formulations, allegedly underpins a shadowy cartel designed to exert monopolistic power in the US. Fifteen individuals have also been named in the lawsuit filed in a court in Connecticut. The complaint alleges that senior executives of the offending companies often met at trade events, conferences, dinners and even golf outings, and kept in touch via phone and email to raise prices and carve up the market among themselves. According to the charges, collusion peaked between July 2013 and January 2015, a period when prices of more than 100 generics went up sharply, some by over 1,000%. These allegations are serious and, if proven, could deal a severe blow to Indian drug exporters that count the US as a major market for off-patent drugs....