The owner of the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the Coldrif cough syrup, allegedly linked to the deaths of at least 20 children in Madhya Pradesh, was arrested in Chennai on Thursday, The Indian Express reported.

A seven-member team of the Madhya Pradesh Police, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police Jitendra Jaat, arrested G Ranganathan from his apartment in Chennai and took him to Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district, where his company, Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, is located.

He is expected to be taken to the Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh, where 17 of the deaths occurred, The Times of India reported.

The police said they will also inspect Sresan’s manufacturing facility later in the day.

Ranganathan has been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to culpable homicide not amounting to murder and adulteration of drugs. The police have also invoked provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, The Times of India reported.

The deaths were reported after several children, who had been suffering from fever and cold, consumed the Coldrif syrup, resulting in vomiting and difficulty in urinating. The first death was recorded on September 2.

On October 2, the Tamil Nadu director of drug 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.

The formulation has now been banned in eight states – Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Puducherry.

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