HC orders Rid Pharma officials to surrender

The High Court today directed five officials of Rid Pharmaceuticals Ltd, who were acquitted in a case filed for manufacturing toxic paracetamol syrup that killed at least 28 children in 2009, to surrender to the trial court in seven days.

The bench of Justice AKM Asaduzzaman and Justice Razik-Al-Jalil passed the order after accepting an appeal filed by the government challenging the lower court verdict that acquitted Rid’s five officials.

The five accused are Rid’s Managing Director Mizanur Rahman, directors Sheuli Rahman and Abdul Gani, and pharmacists Mahbubul Islam and Enamul Haque.

Assistant Attorney General Bashir Ahmed told The Daily Star that the five accused will have to surrender to the trial court concerned in seven days after receiving the HC order.

He said the government filed the appeal with the HC in January this year seeking adequate sentence for the accused as the trial court judgement was not correct.

The trial court judgement and order of acquittal was perverse and against the evidence on record, AAG Bashir said, adding that the accused can seek bail from the trial court after surrendering to it.

From June to August in 2009, 28 children across the country died of renal failures caused by the intake of the paracetamol syrup and suspension allegedly manufactured by Rid Pharma.

On July 22, 2009, the Drug Administration sealed off Rid's factory in BSCIC area of Brahmanbaria following wide media coverage of the children's death, and findings of Dhaka Shishu Hospital physician Prof Mohammad Hanif that Rid Pharma's Temset had toxic substance.

In August the same year, Shafiqul Islam, then superintendent of Drug Administration, filed the case with the Dhaka Drug Court and only five prosecution witnesses testified after the court indicted the five accused in March 2011.

On November 28 last year, Judge M Atoar Rahman of the Drug Court in Dhaka acquitted all the five officials observing that the prosecution utterly failed to prove the charge brought against the accused.

Negligence, inefficiency and incompetence of the Drug Administration in dealing with the case led to the acquittal of all the accused, the judge also said in the verdict.