Cough syrup deaths: Doctor got 10% commission from manufacturer, police tell court

Additional Sessions Judge (Parasia) Gautam Kumar Gujar was hearing Dr Soni’s bail application. The court had, on October 8, denied bail, saying that the doctor “knowingly prescribed and allowed administration of a dangerous adulterated drug that could cause child deaths, even after being aware of the government’s December 2023 directive prohibiting such prescriptions for children under four”.

The probe report submitted by the police before the court stated that on December 18, 2023, the Directorate General of Health Services, Government of India, issued guidelines to all states and Union Territories directing that Fixed Dose Combinations (FDCs) not be administered to children below four years of age. “Despite this, Dr Soni continued prescribing such medications and Coldrif syrup, even after being aware that the drug was causing urine retention and kidney failure in children,” the report alleges.

It states that “15 children have died so far under his treatment” and that he “received a 10% commission from the company for prescribing Coldrif syrup”.

Dr Soni denied the allegations in court. His lawyer, Pawan Kumar Shukla, told the court that as a government doctor, the applicant “merely prescribed medicines during treatment”.

“The contaminated batch of the drug was manufactured by the company, of which he had no knowledge. Having practised medicine for 35–40 years, he did not knowingly prescribe harmful drugs. Drug quality testing is the responsibility of the Drug Controller Department,” he told the court.

The police probe is also focusing on his family members after it was “found that a medical store adjacent to his private clinic is owned by his relatives, and the stockist of the dangerous syrup in Chhindwara is a family member”, the police report submitted to the court states.

A senior police officer told The Indian Express that the probe will also focus on the wholesalers and the stockists. “Ranganathan, the owner of Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, has been taken to Tamil Nadu by the Madhya Pradesh SIT for further investigation,” the officer said.

The FIR against Dr Soni, the directors of Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer and a Jabalpur-based wholesaler was registered on October 4. In the FIR, the Parasia block medical officer, Dr Ankit Sehlam, alleged that several children had died due to consumption of Coldrif cough syrup containing the toxic adulterant Diethylene Glycol.

The report states that several children under five years of age in the Parasia subdivision were treated for common cold, cough, and fever by Dr Soni, who was posted as a paediatrician at the Government Community Health Centre in Parasia. After consuming the cough syrup, some children developed difficulty urinating, elevated serum creatinine and urea levels, and kidney problems. They were referred from Parasia to Nagpur for treatment, where they died in September and October.

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