The owner of the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the Coldrif cough syrup, allegedly linked to the deaths of at least 22 children in Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in Chennai on Thursday, The Indian Express reported.
A seven-member team of the Madhya Pradesh Police, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Jitendra Jaat, arrested G Ranganathan from his apartment in Chennai and took him to Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district, where his company, Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, is located.
He is expected to be taken to the Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh, where 19 of the deaths occurred, The Times of India reported.
The police said they will also inspect Sresan’s manufacturing facility.
Ranganathan has been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to culpable homicide not amounting to murder and adulteration of drugs. The police have also invoked provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, The Times of India reported.
The deaths were reported after several children, who had been suffering from fever and cold, consumed the Coldrif syrup, resulting in vomiting and difficulty urinating. The first death was recorded on September 2.
On October 2, the Tamil Nadu director of drug control found that Coldrif samples were not of standard quality. Three days later, Madhya Pradesh also reported that one sample of Coldrif had 48.6% of diethylene glycol in it.
The permissible limit of diethylene glycol as an impurity is 0.1%. However, drug officials Scroll spoke to said that the chemical is unsafe even in trace amounts and should ideally be completely absent from an ingestible syrup. Its presence is a serious quality compliance issue, the officials said.
The formulation has now been banned in eight states – Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Puducherry.
Toll increases to 22
The arrest came as two more children from Chhindwara died due to suspected kidney infections caused allegedly after consuming the Coldrif cough syrup, PTI reported on Thursday. This took the toll to 22.
The two children were from Parasia town in the district.
Chhindwara Additional Collector Dhirendra Singh Netri told PTI that five-year-old Vishal died on Wednesday evening and four-year-old Mayank Suryavanshi later at night while undergoing treatment at a hospital in Nagpur in neighbouring Maharashtra.
The two children died due to suspected kidney failure, which was linked to the consumption of the cough syrup, the news agency quoted unidentified officials as saying.
Two officials suspended in Tamil Nadu, says minister
On Thursday, Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian said that two drug inspectors in the state have been suspended for failing to conduct quality checks on the drugs manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in the past two years, The Hindu reported.
Subramanian added that the two drug inspectors had also failed to monitor the facility.
The minister noted that the state’s Drugs Control Department launched an inspection immediately after receiving information from the Madhya Pradesh government on October 1 about the alleged contamination of the cough syrup.
He added that once the testing confirmed the contamination, the authorities in Madhya Pradesh and the Union Health Ministry were informed, The Hindu reported. In addition, officials in Odisha and Puducherry were also alerted based on the distribution records.
“While Madhya Pradesh and the Union Health Ministry initially found no issues with the syrup, it was Tamil Nadu that detected the presence of DEG [diethylene glycol] and confirmed the extent of contamination,” the newspaper quoted Subramanian as saying.
The minister said that a “Stop Production Order” was immediately issued to the manufacturer on October 3 based on these findings. A closure order was also issued, he added.
On October 7, a notice to initiate criminal proceedings was issued to the owner of the manufacturing facility. “As he was unavailable to receive it, the notice was displayed at the premises,” the minister said, adding that he has since been arrested.
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