Case goes into trial at last
About two years into the deaths of 28 children, allegedly after taking toxic paracetamol syrup produced by Rid Pharma Ltd, a Dhaka court only yesterday framed charges against five officials of the drug company.
Three of the accused are still at large, while the managing director and a director of Rid Pharma are on bail.
The trial is yet to begin, and justice is being delayed as the court allowed deferment of hearing for framing charges time and again.
Police also delayed the proceedings of the case by taking long 14 months to act on an arrest warrant before they informed the court that the accused were absconding. Later, the two of the five accused obtained bail from the court after surrender.
Cases were filed in four courts against the accused. Although charges were finally framed in one of the courts yesterday, legal experts and relevant authorities do not expect much, as they see gaping holes in the cases.
For example, autopsy was not done on any of the 28 children who died allegedly by taking the paracetamol laced with deadly diethylene glycol, an industrial solvent and an ingredient in antifreeze and brake fluid. So there is hardly any chance of linking the deaths to the presence of the toxin.
Not only that, the fact that diethylene glycol was present in Rid Pharma's paracetamol syrup, Temset, was not mentioned at all in three of the cases. Those cases only mentioned that the syrup was "substandard".
Lacking is also noticed in testing the syrup. Products from the same batch were tested in government and private laboratories. While the private tests showed presence of diethylene glycol, the government lab did not. No effort was put to check the validity of the government lab tests, and the private test result was not mentioned anywhere in the cases.
Tests at the government lab of another batch however found traces of the toxin as well, but when a case was filed the quantity of the element was not mentioned, making it unclear whether the presence was fatal or not.
In two months starting from June 2009, the 28 children died from acute renal failure (ARF) after they had been allegedly administered Temset paracetamol syrup for fever. Rid Pharma did not have the license to produce paracetamol syrup -- which is another offence.
In Dhaka Drug Court, hearing on charge framing in one of the cases, was deferred six consecutive times till February 28 this year, on flimsy excuses like inability of the accused and defence lawyers to appear before the court either due to illness or being occupied otherwise. Finally the charge was framed yesterday by accusing the five.
Director General (DG) of the Directorate of Drug Administration (DDA) Abul Kalam Azad admits to the flaws.
"What you are saying is right, the cases were not filed properly," said Azad. "Probably it should have been mentioned in all the cases that Rid Pharma used diethylene glycol. Without an autopsy you cannot claim that diethylene glycol was the cause of deaths."
The lone petitioner who complained about detection of diethylene glycol in the case filed in Narayanganj, DDA's Drug Superintendent Nayar Sultana, is not hopeful of a conviction either. "The case may not stand at all because we tested only one sample instead of customary eight," Sultana said.
The Daily Star investigation also found that the private laboratory test that detected traces of diethylene glycol in a batch of Temset was officially ordered by the-then DDA Director General Brig Gen Ismail Hossain, but the findings were mysteriously not mentioned in any case.
When contacted, Ismail could not recollect why he had not taken into account the private laboratory test result. He also avoided clarifying why he had sent the sample to a private lab for testing in the first place.
But he faulted drug superintendents for making the cases weak, because they were the ones who filed those. He also blamed the health ministry for not conducting autopsies of the dead children, although according to his claim, he had reminded the ministry to do so.
Current DDA DG Abul Kalam Azad surprisingly sympathises with the adulterators. He said, "The owner's business is already devastated over this single incident. This is also a kind of punishment, particularly financial punishment. Serving jail time is of course another kind of punishment."
Hopes of trial of the adulterators, however, still remain as many samples of the syrup collected, are still available from local DDA offices while the private laboratory that conducted a test, also preserved the sample it tested, said sources in DDA and the laboratory, adding that an immediate test of the samples may help the case towards a fair trial.
The Rid Pharma cases are utterly reminiscent of the fate of four other cases filed in 1992 against four other companies for adulterating paracetamol syrups using the same toxin, in which the same authorities were dealing with estimated deaths of 2,700 children over a period of more than ten years. Two of the 1992 cases are still pending with the High Court (HC) while trial of another just resumed, 16 years after it had been stayed by the HC. In the fourth case the accused were acquitted.
THE WHISTLE-BLOWER
Prof Mohammad Hanif, the man who blew the whistle first in 1992 confirming presence of diethylene glycol in four brands of paracetamol syrup, was again the first to announce presence of the same element in Temset of Rid Pharma around mid July of 2009.
Deaths of 20 children admitted to Dhaka Shishu Hospital with acute renal failure in June-July 2009 prompted Hanif to send for laboratory test of a sample of Temset that he had collected from the family of a victim. The test found the toxin in the sample, Hanif told The Daily Star.
Following his alarm, the government formed a committee to probe the incident. DDA collected a few samples of the drug from Sylhet and Narayanganj, although children died in a wide area including Brahmanbaria, Comilla, Sylhet, Rangpur, Madaripur, Bogra, Narayanganj, Habiganj, and Narsinghdi.
THE TESTS
The committee tested different brands of paracetamol syrup including Temset at government affiliated Essential Drug Company Ltd under the supervision of analysts appointed by the government, and detected diethylene glycol only in the 5th batch of Temset.
Temset samples were also tested at Plasma Plus, a private lab, where the toxin was traced in two samples of the 8th batch of the drug.
"But the tests done at Plasma Plus cannot be counted, as the testing laboratory is not a government one," said Drug Superintendent Shafiqul Islam, who sent the samples for test to both the government and the private labs.
Though documents show that DDA collected samples of Temset belonging to the batches 3rd, 5th, 7th, 8th, and 12th, the government only had two batches tested. Nobody could answer why the remaining samples were not tested.
Even the sample of Temset belonging to the 3rd batch, which DDA collected from a victim's family at Shishu Hospital, was never produced for test for reasons unknown.
A member of the probe body Prof Moazzam Hossain said they only tested the samples provided by DDA.
FILING OF WEAK CASES
DDA filed four cases against five people of Rid Pharma Ltd on August 10 and 11, 2009 in four districts -- Narayanganj, Brahmanbaria, Sylhet, and Dhaka.
But ironically no-reference of use of diethylene glycol by the manufacturer was made in three cases. Only the one filed in Narayanganj mentioned it.
"Separate cases were filed based on separate tests. Diethylene glycol was not detected in the sample I collected," claimed DDA Drug Superintendent Shafiqul Islam, who collected the sample from Shishu hospital, and filed the case with Dhaka Drug Court.
Since DDA in its depositions in three of the cases had not mentioned that diethylene glycol had been found in Temset, the drug adulterators soon managed bail from all the three courts, said public prosecutors. The courts in their orders for bail mentioned since no diethylene glycol was detected, the drug cannot be said to be life threatening.
Gaining bail from the three courts, the accused approached the Narayanganj court with a submission that three other courts had already granted them bail as their drugs were tested negative for diethylene glycol. Narayanganj court also granted them bail, the public prosecutors added.
DDA officials who filed the cases said the depositions had been prepared in the same format by someone in the head office and were sent to them.
Shafiqul said he had no hand in the depositions. "Actually we are not legal experts. Under the DG's instruction we filed the case after taking suggestions from lawyers. Our office doesn't have a legal expert, and we had to take advice from our personal lawyers."
The DG DDA back then was Brig Gen Ismail Hossain.
ABUL KHAYER FACTOR
The-then Drug Superintendent in Brahmanbaria Abul Khayer was ordered by DDA to seal off Rid Pharma's factory situated in that district, following a wide media coverage of the children's deaths, and Prof Mohammad Hanif's finding that Temset had diethylene glycol. He was also ordered to collect samples of all medicines produced by Rid Pharma.
After sealing off the plant, Khayer initially reported to the head office that he had collected Temset samples, but when he filed a case in August 2009 in Brahmanbaria, he did not mention anything at all about Temset.
Khayer is the only DDA official who has been dealing since 1992 with the allegations of the toxin's use in paracetamol syrups. In his Rid Pharma case statement, he stated that he could collect samples of only two batches of Ridaplex Syrup, which is a vitamin B complex.
When asked how he could not find even one sample of Temset, Abul Khayer said, "From where would I collect the sample when there wasn't anything left in the factory. I searched through the entire area of Comilla and Brahmanbaria, but did not find even a bottle of Temset syrup."
But when he was reminded that his initial report to the head office said that he had collected some Temset samples, he remained quiet.
The Daily Star obtained a copy of the letter dated July 23, 2009 in which Khayer clearly wrote to a DDA director that he had obtained "Temset from batch no 5, 7 and 12".
He also told The Daily Star recently that he managed to get hold of 1,200 bottles of Temset soon after the government ordered tests were done. "I requested the local chemist and druggist associations and other drug related bodies, to collect the 1,200 samples swiftly," he said adding that Brahmanbaria DDA office still has those.
Abul Khayer came under strong media criticism once before on October 20 last year during a trial of a case filed in connection with paracetamol syrup adulteration in 1992, when he sided with drug adulterators.
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