The Madhya Pradesh High Court has granted bail to a raw material supplier and a sales representative connected to Sresan Pharmaceuticals’ Coldriff cough syrup, which allegedly took the lives of over 20 children in the state in 2025.
The two men are Shailesh Pandiya and Satish Verma. According to LiveLaw, Shailesh is the proprietor of a firm that supplied diethylene glycol (DEG) to the pharmaceutical company. He argued that he had merely supplied the chemical and was not involved in the manufacture of the medicine.
The court observed that besides playing no part in the manufacture of the medicine, the material supplied by Shailesh was not sub-standard either. LiveLaw reported that the court noted that he was the supplier of food grade DEG and not pharma-grade.
Satish is a medical representative who sold Coldriff syrup in Madhya Pradesh. He stated that he knew nothing about the safety of the medicine and was involved solely in selling the syrup in its sealed pack.
Granting bail to the two men, the court noted that it was doing so without expressing any opinion on the merits of the case, the Live Law report said.
Since August 2025, over 20 children had died in Madhya Pradesh after consuming the DEG-contaminated cough syrup produced by Chennai-based Sresan Pharmaceuticals. On October 3, Tamil Nadu’s drug testing laboratory confirmed the syrup contained 48.6% DEG and flagged more than 364 manufacturing violations at Sresan.
The Madhya Pradesh incident was not the first time mass fatality was reported after children consumed DEG-contaminated cough syrups manufactured in India. Earlier this year, TNM and NL conducted a joint investigation into three companies responsible for child deaths in India and abroad.
Watch the detailed report here:
