Coldrif tragedy: Inside India’s recurring cough syrup poisonings | LME 95 | Pooja Prasanna

A cough syrup is one of the most ordinary medicines on your shelf — something you’d give your child without a second thought.

This simple act of care has turned fatal for many parents.

At least 23 children in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are dead after consuming cough syrup laced with a deadly industrial chemical.

In Madhya Pradesh, the culprit was Coldrif — a syrup adulterated with diethylene glycol or DEG. 

DEG is a poisonous solvent used in car brake fluid and coolants, never meant for human consumption.

Even small amounts can destroy the kidneys, especially in children.

India’s drug control system must be held directly responsible for the deaths of these children.

For years, Indian pharmaceutical companies have exported cough syrups contaminated with DEG — and children have died, not just in India, but across the world.

In The Gambia and Uzbekistan, dozens of children were killed. 

Nepal and Ghana have raised complaints.

Yet beyond token responses and official denials, India has done little to prevent these tragedies, or ban the use of DEG outright.

And that’s not the only failure.

Pharmaceutical companies have always bought political influence. By paying huge donations. So from the small to the big defaulters, hardly anyone is seriously punished. 

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When it came to Coldrif, doctors in Nagpur were among the first to raise the alarm. They suspected DEG poisoning as early as September 22. 

But the Madhya Pradesh FDA cleared Coldrif, claiming it was free of contamination. The Union Health Ministry repeated that claim without conducting its own tests.

It wasn’t until the Tamil Nadu Director of Drugs Control tested the samples and found them containing nearly 50% DEG that the truth came out. 

By then, more children had already died. 

But Tamil Nadu isn’t in the clear either. 

Watch my colleague Shabbir’s ground report from Kanchipuram to understand how the pharmaceutical company was allowed to function out of a dilapidated building for years without any supervision. 

And let me remind you. These deaths were preventable. The system failed. And too often, stories like these are swept under the rug.

Independent journalism exists to prevent that — to investigate, to question, and to hold power accountable.

In 2024, we told you how 35 pharmaceutical companies had used electoral bonds to donate roughly 945 crore rupees to political parties. 

We found that at least 22 donated in states where they had manufacturing units, and seven were under investigation for substandard drugs at the time. 

But we can’t do this work alone. Supporting The News Minute ensures that we continue to tell the stories that demand change.

Even a small contribution helps us keep doing this.

Now back to the topic.

Firstly, cough syrup isn’t just sugar water. It needs a solvent to dissolve all the active ingredients, add sweetness, and act as a lubricant. 

Normally, pharma-grade glycerine or propylene glycol is used — clear, sweet, and safe.

But some manufacturers cut corners. A cheaper solvent called industrial glycerine is used as a substitute, and it can contain DEG or ethylene glycol.

Even small amounts of this can destroy kidneys, cause severe vomiting, abdominal pain, and death — especially in children. 

According to a report by the Scroll, all the children who died in Madhya Pradesh showed these exact symptoms.

The rules are clear. Every batch of glycerine or propylene glycol must be tested for DEG. 

But in India, there is no rule making DEG testing compulsory for cough syrups before they go on sale. 

And as this tragedy shows, the safeguards that do exist are often ignored.

Back in 1937, over a hundred people in the US — many of them children — died after taking a cough syrup containing DEG. 

That disaster led to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which - does not completely ban DEG but severely restricts its use. 

Since then, the US hasn’t seen a single DEG-related death.

But in 2023, following cough syrup deaths worldwide- the US reprimanded 28 companies, some of them Indian ones.

Indian-made medicines dominate the global generic drug market.

and the most vulnerable are often poorer countries that rely heavily on these exports. 

And the pattern of contamination and deaths stretches across years and borders.

In 2022, at least 70 children died in The Gambia after taking syrups made by Maiden Pharmaceuticals in Haryana. 

WHO found these syrups contaminated with DEG and ethylene glycol. 

Just months later, Uzbekistan reported 65 child deaths linked to Dok 1 Max, made by Marion Biotech in Noida.

Closer to home, between December 2019 and January 2020, at least 12 children in Jammu and Kashmir died after taking Coldbest syrup from Digital Vision in Himachal Pradesh 

— a company whose products had repeatedly failed quality tests. 

Another child in Himachal died in 2020 after taking Cofset syrup from the same manufacturer. 

Digital Vision’s  Cerico CP tablets were even found fake in Maharashtra back in 2015. Five years later, the owners are still out on bail, and the case drags on.

DEG-related deaths in India go back even further — at least to 1972, when 15 children in Chennai died 

In 1986, 14 patients lost their lives in Mumbai. 

11 in Bihar in 1988, 33 children in Gurgaon in 1998.

The script is always the same. 

Deaths are dismissed as coincidence, governments deny contamination, action comes only after outside labs confirm it — 

then arrests, bail, and business as usual.

In fact Maiden Pharmaceuticals that was considered responsible for deaths in Ghana has approached the court saying they want to reopen their manufacturing unit.

Even in 2024, WHO issued an alert about cough syrup made by an Indian company 

after samples in Iraq showed adulteration. 

In 2025, Nepal blacklisted 16 Indian pharma companies — including IPCA, Cadila, Zee, and Mercury — for repeated quality violations.

India makes the most amount of generic drugs in the world. 

But it also has a shadow epidemic: unsafe, low-quality, and sometimes lethal medicines that slip through the system without detection or accountability.

And the most dangerous things for consumers like us- There is also no reliable way to recall drugs that are known to be poor quality.

In many cases, they are not recalled at all.

Historically, the story of drug recalls in India is one of bureaucratic procrastination.

The Union government first discussed a drug recall law in 1976, after the Chennai deaths.

Between 1976 and 2019, a recall policy was discussed at least ten times — but no effective framework emerged.

Meanwhile, Section 18 was inserted into the Drugs and Cosmetics Act in 1982 to prohibit the sale of NSQ drugs. Nsq means not of standard quality.

In theory, it gives regulators the authority to recall bad drugs. In practice, compliance remains unclear.

In 2012, the CDSCO said manufacturers are responsible for recall. If a company makes a bad drug, they must go from shop to shop and recall it.

No surprise- the onus isn’t on the government or drug regulatory agencies. No legal obligation.  

A comparison with the US is instructive.

The FDA doesn’t just issue a recall. It actively oversees the company’s strategy and evaluates its effectiveness.

If a recall is incomplete, the FDA can demand additional steps to protect patients.

India doesn’t yet have a comparable system.

The Drugs and Cosmetics Act  was last updated in 2019. A new Bill, drafted in 2022 to replace the old law, hasn’t been finalised. 

But critics say it still doesn’t fix the real problems — which include a confusing regulatory system, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and weak consequences for companies that make unsafe drugs.

And then there’s the political angle. 

As I told you earlier, pharma companies donate money to political parties — for quid pro quo or even immunity.  

When companies that make unsafe medicines can also buy political influence, it’s no wonder the system protects profits over children. 

And while these children can never be brought back, every one of these deaths is a warning — a mirror to the system that continues to fail.

Many governments have since issued advisories asking doctors not to prescribe cough syrups to children under two, and to exercise caution even for older children. 

But these warnings shift the burden onto parents and physicians — not the regulators or companies responsible for letting toxic drugs reach the market.

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