The police in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara district have arrested a government doctor who allegedly prescribed a cough syrup suspected to be linked to the deaths of 11 children, The Times of India reported.

The doctor, Praveen Soni, was said to have prescribed the cough syrup Coldrif, now banned in the state, to children, leading to 11 deaths over the course of the past month. While Soni was a paediatrician at the Civil Hospital in Chhindwara’s Parasia town, he also had a private practice, the police alleged.

The doctor was taken into custody late on Saturday, The Hindu quoted Chhindwara Superintendent of Police Ajay Pandey as saying. The police filed a case against Soni as well as the Tamil Nadu-based company that manufactured the cough syrup, Sresan Pharmaceuticals.

The first information report has been filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to culpable homicide not amounting to murder and adulteration of drugs, and under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.

Soni was on Sunday suspended by the state health department on charges of negligence, and attached with the department’s Jabalpur regional office, The Hindu reported.

The suspension order said that the doctor prescribed the Coldrif cough syrup to children, leading them to develop high fever, kidney problems and difficulty in urinating. “Had he diagnosed the children’s problems properly and given them the right treatment, possibly they could have been saved,” the order said, according to The Hindu.

After the deaths came to light, three states – Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala – banned the sale and distribution of the cough syrup Coldrif.

A report by the Tamil Nadu director of drug control on October 2 found that samples of the cough syrup manufactured at a plant of Sresan Pharmaceuticals in the state’s Kancheepuram district were found to be “NSQ”, or not of standard quality.

The report said that the samples contained 48.6% diethylene glycol, which can cause acute kidney and liver failure. In 2023, an inquiry by the World Health Organization had found diethylene glycol in India-made cough syrups allegedly linked to the deaths of 70 children in The Gambia.

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