Outside the facility, an effluent treatment plant and large blue-and-white chemical drums stand amid discarded liquor bottles and used gloves strewn nearby. Peering through the window, the interior contrasts sharply with what one would expect from a medical manufacturing facility.
Published Oct 11, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Oct 11, 2025 | 9:00 AM
The sealed Sresan Pharmaceuticals facility in Kanchipuram. (Inset) An effluent treatment plant located outside the facility.
Synopsis: Sresan Pharmaceuticals’ Kanchipuram facility, where a batch of toxic children’s cough syrup containing diethylene glycol was produced, has been shut down and is under investigation. South First was on the ground at the facility, which bore a stark contrast to what one would expect from a medical manufacturing plant.
Walking past the bustling Bangalore Highway in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, it is easy to miss the small blue building tucked beside a motorcycle showroom, amid the daily traffic of trucks, buses and commuters.
From the outside, nothing stands out except for six official notices plastered on the walls, restricting access. It was here that a batch of toxic cough syrup, which killed 20 children across Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan starting in September, was manufactured.
The facility is now shut down and under investigation. But when South First visited, it was evident that even with the gate locked, someone determined could easily enter the compound over the short boundary walls.
View of the facility from outside the premises.
Outside the facility, an effluent treatment plant and large blue-and-white chemical drums stand amid discarded liquor bottles and used gloves strewn nearby.
Peering through the window, the interior contrasts sharply with what one would expect from a medical manufacturing facility.
The floor is bare cement, stained and uneven, with visible water puddles and human footprints. Large and small storage cans, heaps of raw materials, and a hose lie around – an environment unfit for any kind of manufacturing, let alone the production of medicines.
Throughout September, many parents across Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan who had taken their children for treatment of common colds began to notice their conditions worsening.
Large chemical drums outside the facility.
Symptoms included vomiting, swelling due to fluid retention, and abnormal kidney function. Within weeks, at least 20 children had died in similar fashion, leaving families devastated and doctors scrambling for answers.
The culprit was eventually traced to a particular brand of children’s cough syrup: Coldrif.
Made by Sresan Pharmaceuticals, a company owned by G Ranganathan, it had been in the pharmaceutical business for over four decades.
But how could something meant to heal turn so deadly?
Lab tests soon revealed the answer. This batch of syrup contained diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical, at levels almost 500 times above safe limits.
Within days, states across the country scrambled to contain the damage, issuing warnings against its use and banning its sale.
Authorities in Tamil Nadu halted production at the Kanchipuram facility and issued notices to Sresan. Most alarmingly, an investigation found nearly 400 gross violations of norms. These included rusty, leaking equipment, unhygienic floors, and the use of non-medical-grade raw materials.
But how did a manufacturer operating since 1990 run its Kanchipuram facility under such unhygienic conditions for decades without serious regulatory scrutiny?
To locals, the Sresan facility was nondescript and almost mysterious for a pharmaceutical manufacturing unit.
“Even though the highway is busy with trucks, buses, and people passing by all day, you hardly notice the factory. The building keeps to itself, and the workers rarely come outside. From my hotel next door, I can see the area, and it feels like the factory operates quietly while everything else moves around it,” the owner of a nearby hotel told South First.
“Workers usually came in around 9 to 9.30 am and left by 5 or 6 pm. But in between, they hardly ever come out, so nobody really knows what happened inside. The owner himself used to come once a month,” Bharati, an employee at a nearby company, told South First.
“There are about 10 people working here, but their work remains mostly unseen. After the incident, I only saw the police come once at night; other than that, no one visited.”
Chemical drums outside the facility.
Despite a staggering 364 violations uncovered at the factory, including unhygienic conditions, leaking equipment, and toxic raw materials, authorities at the Tamil Nadu Drug Control Department offered no answers when approached, handing out press releases instead of accountability.
“Coldrif is very harmful. The components themselves are dangerous, you cannot use them. I have never sold it, not even once, since day one. Even before all this happened, I knew it was bad,” a pharmacist added, speaking to South First.
Pinned across the blue walls of the factory, six official notices stand almost like a show of authority. Issued under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940, they reference specific sections and outline the manufacturer’s legal obligations.
But in a space where medicines for children have been made under appalling conditions for decades, they feel symbolic rather than corrective.
One notice states, “Distribution of these drugs is prohibited until compliance is verified,” yet the factory’s years of unchecked operations and the deaths linked to Coldrif syrup reveal a system that allowed negligence to thrive long before these papers appeared.
