The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the cough syrup tragedy that led to the death of 24 children in Madhya Pradesh has arrested the wife of accused Dr. Praveen Soni, an official said on Tuesday, according to PTI.
Officials said Sonia’s wife owns a medical store from which the cough syrup was sold to many of the victims.
Chhindwara-based Dr Soni was taken into custody last month for alleged negligence after she allegedly prescribed contaminated ‘Coldrif’ cough syrup to many affected children who later died of kidney failure. His wife Jyoti Soni, who is also named in the case, was arrested from their house in Parasia town of Chhindwara district on Monday night, according to police officer and SIT in-charge Jitendra Jaat.
A total of seven people were arrested in connection with the incident, the official said. Sresan Pharma owner G. Ranganathan, medical representative Satish Verma, chemist K. Maheshwari, wholesaler Rajesh Soni and health store pharmacist Sourabh Jain were arrested.
A total of 24 children in Madhya Pradesh, most of them under the age of five, have reportedly died of suspected kidney failure after being given Coldrif cough syrup. At least three children have also died after consuming the syrup in neighboring Rajasthan. This led the World Health Organization (WHO) to issue an alert against three “substandard” oral cough syrups identified in India, namely Coldrif, Respifresh TR and ReLife.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the deaths of the children, the Tamil Nadu government has canceled the license of Sresan Pharma to manufacture cough syrup. On October 2, Tamil Nadu’s Director of Drug Control found that the Coldrif samples were not of standard quality. Madhya Pradesh officials also said one sample of Coldrif contained 48.6 percent diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical, far exceeding the 0.1 percent permissible limit as an impurity.
The MP police arrested Dr. Praveen Soni, a general practitioner, for alleged negligence. Following the deaths, the syrup was banned in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Puducherry, West Bengal and Delhi.
“The blame in the case must not be spared”
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said that “the culprit in the case will not be spared”. The state government also took disciplinary action by suspending the drug controller and assistant drug controller for their negligence in testing random samples of drugs and went on to form a special investigation team (SIT) to conduct a detailed probe into the incident. The Tamil Nadu government shut down the Sresan Pharma manufacturing plant soon after the children’s deaths as part of its response to the tragedy.
