In a significant development in the ongoing cough syrup tragedy, police have arrested a medical representative from Sresan Pharma, the company allegedly responsible for the ‘Coldrif’ cough syrup linked to the deaths of 24 children in Madhya Pradesh.
Satish Verma, who worked for the Tamil Nadu-based pharmaceutical company, was apprehended in Chhindwara between Sunday night and Monday morning. This arrest brings the total number of individuals taken into custody in connection with the case to six.
Among those previously arrested are Sresan Pharma owner G. Ranganathan, Dr. Praveen Soni, a Chhindwara-based doctor accused of prescribing the tainted syrup, chemist K. Maheshwari, wholesaler Rajesh Soni, and medical store pharmacist Sourabh Jain. Authorities anticipate further arrests as the investigation continues.
The devastating incident saw 24 children in Madhya Pradesh, mostly under five years old, succumb to suspected kidney failure after consuming the Coldrif cough syrup. An additional three children in neighboring Rajasthan also died after taking the same medicine.
The gravity of the situation prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to issue a global alert concerning three “substandard” oral cough syrups identified in India: Coldrif, Respifresh TR, and ReLife. Investigations began when, on October 2, the Tamil Nadu director of drugs control flagged Coldrif samples as not meeting standard quality. Shortly after, Madhya Pradesh reported that a sample of Coldrif contained a shocking 48.6% diethylene glycol, a highly toxic chemical, far surpassing the safe impurity limit of 0.1%.
Following these revelations, the M.P. police arrested Dr. Praveen Soni for alleged negligence. The contaminated syrup has since been banned across multiple Indian states and union territories, including Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Puducherry, West Bengal, and Delhi.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav has vowed that all those responsible will face justice. The State government has also taken action by suspending the drug controller and assistant drug controller for negligence in drug sample testing and has established a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to thoroughly probe the matter. In Tamil Nadu, Sresan Pharma’s manufacturing unit was sealed immediately after the children’s deaths came to national attention.