Published Mar 04, 2023 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Mar 04, 2023 | 8:00 AM
Marion Biotech is based out of Noida in Uttar Pradesh. (Supplied)
The police on Friday, 3 March, arrested three employees of a Noida-based pharmaceutical firm whose cough syrup is alleged to have led to the death of 18 children in Uzbekistan last year.
The arrests come after an FIR was lodged late on Thursday night against five officials of Marion Biotech, including two of its directors, over a complaint by a drugs inspector of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO).
The central and Uttar Pradesh state drug authorities had checked samples of Marion Biotech’s drugs and found 22 of them to be “not of standard quality” (adulterated and spurious), according to the complainant drug inspector.
“Three persons named in the FIR have been arrested, while the two directors of the company are at large. Those arrested are Head of Operation Tuhin Bhattacharya, Manufacturing Chemist Atul Rawat, and Analytical Chemist Mool Singh,” said Noida Phase 3 Police Station in-charge Vijay Kumar.
Marion Biotech, which has its offices in Sector 67 in Noida, had come under the scanner in December last year for its cough syrup Dok-1, which was suspected to have led to the death of 18 children who consumed it in Uzbekistan, after which the CDSCO launched a probe into the matter.
The Uzbekistan government on 28 December 2022 said 18 children in the country died due to the side effects of a cough syrup produced by Marion Biotech, an Indian pharmaceutical firm.
“We reported the occurrence of side effects in children as a result of taking the drug Dok-1 Max in the city of Samarkand,” said the Ministry of Health of Uzbekistan in a statement back then.
“To date, 18 out of 21 children with acute respiratory disease have died as a result of taking Doc-1 Max syrup,” it added.
The ministry also said that tablets and the syrup Dok-1 Max manufactured by Marion Biotech Private Limited in our country were registered in 2012 and went on sale the same year.
All manufacturing activities at Marion Biotech’s Noida unit have been stopped in view of reports of contamination of its cough syrup.
Marion Biotech does not sell Dok-1 Max in India, and its only export has been to Uzbekistan, an Uttar Pradesh government official said during the aforementioned inspection.
According to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, the CDSCO has been in regular contact with the national drug regulator of Uzbekistan regarding the matter since 27 December.
(With PTI inputs)
