The Madhya Pradesh Police has arrested the wife of a doctor who is in jail for prescribing a cough syrup that purportedly led to the death of 25 children in the state, The Hindu reported on Tuesday.
The deaths that took place over the past two months in the state came after the children allegedly consumed a substandard cough syrup named Coldrif.
The doctor, Praveen Soni, had been arrested on October 5 for allegedly prescribing Coldrif to the children. He was a paediatrician at the Civil Hospital in Chhindwara’s Parasia town and also had a private practice, the police had alleged.
Jyoti Soni, the wife of the paediatrician and the proprietor of a pharmacy at his private practice in Parasia, where most of the children were prescribed the syrup, was arrested on Monday, The Hindu reported.
Parasia Sub-Divisional Officer of Police Jitendra Jaat told The Hindu that most of the Coldrif syrup bottles had been purchased from Jyoti Soni’s pharmacy.
The officer added that Jyoti Soni had been presented before a court on Tuesday, which remanded her to police custody for three days. “We will now question her for further details,” The Hindu quoted Jaat as saying.
Apart from Madhya Pradesh, deaths had also been reported from Rajasthan. 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.
The Coldrif syrup was manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacture, which is situated in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district.
On October 2, the Tamil Nadu director of drugs 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.
On October 9, the Madhya Pradesh Police arrested the owner of Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, G Ranganathan, in Chennai. Six other persons linked to the supply chain of the syrup were also arrested, The Hindu reported.
Two drug inspectors from Tamil Nadu had been suspended for failing to conduct quality checks on the drugs manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in the past two years.
The Tamil Nadu government also revoked the manufacturing licence of Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer and shut down the company
Following the deaths, the formulation was banned in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Puducherry, West Bengal and Delhi.
The deaths of the children led to the World Health Organization issuing a medical alert on October 13 against the use of three cough syrups found to contain diethylene glycol beyond permissible limits, a substance that can cause acute kidney and liver failure.
The alert named specific batches of Coldrif syrup, and Respifresh TR and ReLife, produced by manufacturing companies in Gujarat.
Also read:
How justice was denied to Jammu children killed five years ago by deadly cough syrup
How adulterated cough syrup killed Madhya Pradesh’s children
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