The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday attached two apartments in Chennai belonging to the owner of Sresan Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the Coldrif cough syrup linked to the deaths of 25 children in Madhya Pradesh, The Hindu reported.

The flats, located in Kodambakkam and valued at Rs 2 crore, were attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act following an investigation based on two first information reports registered by the Madhya Pradesh Police and the Tamil Nadu drugs controller, The Telegraph reported.

On October 9, the Madhya Pradesh Police arrested G Ranganathan, the owner of the firm that made the syrup, in Chennai. Six others linked to the supply chain of the syrup were also arrested.

According to the Enforcement Directorate, the company used industrial-grade raw materials instead of pharmaceutical-grade ingredients and carried out no proper quality checks, The Telegraph reported.

“Such materials were being purchased in cash without invoices to avoid creation of records,” PTI quoted the agency as saying.

The Enforcement Directorate also alleged that the firm indulged in “rampant unfair trade practices to suppress its manufacturing costs and increase profits, which are nothing but proceeds of crime”, The Telegraph reported.

The agency had previously carried out searches at 10 locations linked to Sresan Pharmaceuticals, drugs control officials, licence agents and others, seizing evidence related to the company’s financial dealings and adulterated manufacturing practices, The Hindu reported.

Apart from Madhya Pradesh, deaths had also been reported from Rajasthan. Several children, who had been suffering from fever and cold, consumed the Coldrif syrup, resulting in vomiting and difficulty urinating.

The first death was recorded on September 2.

The Coldrif syrup was manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacture, which is situated in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district.

On October 2, the Tamil Nadu director of drugs control found that Coldrif samples were not of standard quality. Three days later, Madhya Pradesh also reported that one sample of Coldrif had 48.6% of diethylene glycol in it.

The permissible limit of diethylene glycol as an impurity is 0.1%. However, drug officials Scroll spoke to said that the chemical is unsafe even in trace amounts and should ideally be completely absent from an ingestible syrup. Its presence is a serious quality compliance issue, the officials said.

Two drug inspectors from Tamil Nadu had been suspended for failing to conduct quality checks on the drugs manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in the past two years.

The Tamil Nadu government also revoked the manufacturing licence of the company and shut it down.

Following the deaths, the formulation was banned in several states including Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh.

The deaths of the children led the World Health Organization to issue a medical alert on October 13 against the use of three cough syrups found to contain diethylene glycol beyond permissible limits, a substance that can cause acute kidney and liver failure.

The alert named specific batches of Coldrif syrup, and Respifresh TR and ReLife, produced by manufacturing companies in Gujarat.

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