Law too weak to protect people
One-and-a-half-year-old Tanvir died of renal failure immediately after given paracetamol syrup tainted with poisonous industrial substance diethylene glycol in 1992.
His parents have always regarded the manufacturers of this poisonous “medicine” as murderers who should be made to walk the gallows.
But the law -- the Drugs (Control) Ordinance-1982 -- under which medicine adulterators are being tried, says nothing in case of deaths or disabilities resulting from adulterated drug, said legal experts.
It has proved to be incomprehensive and inadequate.
Even the country's drug regulator is unable to accuse the perpetrators of murder, let alone the parents of children who died from the poisoning.
A person who manufactures, imports, distributes or sells adulterated or spurious drug may get highest 10 years' imprisonment or be fined Tk 2 lakh or both, says the ordinance.
“This is the weakness of the law,” a former judge, having experience in dealing with cases regarding the manufacture of drugs, told The Daily Star on Wednesday. “The law should be amended incorporating provisions of adequate punishment for such offences,” he added.
Like Tanvir, at least 75 other children died after they were given the syrups, according to cases the government filed against four drug manufacturing companies in 1992. But the number of deaths from the poisonous medicine was put at 2,700 by a study of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.
Yesterday, six owners and employees of one of the four companies, BCI (Bangladesh) Ltd, was handed 10 years' imprisonment.
The victims' families cried loud to draw the authority's attention to the existing laws, labelling the punishment lenient. They felt 10 years imprisonment was way too little for such a crime.
In the first-ever instance of conviction for drug adulteration in Bangladesh, a Dhaka Drug Court in July 2014 awarded 10 years' rigorous imprisonment to an owner and two officials of Adflame Pharmaceuticals, one of the four companies.
Observing that the drug ordinance did not provide for tougher sentences, the judge of the drug court in 2014, while delivering the verdict, said, “The accused have committed a heinous crime against the society, children and humanity as well ... they deserved the highest punishment.”
In addition to the existing Drug Act-1940, the government had enacted the Drugs (Control) Ordinance, 1982, to control the manufactures, imports, distribution and sales of the drugs. The Drug Act-1940 of the British era has the same punishment.
But both the laws are silent regarding deaths or any physical harm caused by adulterated or spurious drug, said a former sessions and district judge.
Anwar Zahid Bhuiyan, a former public prosecutor of a drug court, also sees the existing ordinance insufficient in terms of bringing to book people involved in adulterated drugs.
He saw no bar to amending the law with the provision of capital punishment.
“If the acid [crime control] act consists of capital punishment then why this [Drugs (control)] ordinance will not include such punishment?” he asked.
However, trial regarding the cases of adulteration of drugs can be held under the Special Powers Act-1974, which has the provision for the death penalty.
The drug administration, Directorate General of Drug Administration, which only can initiate legal proceeding against such crimes, tends to follow the drug ordinance in filing cases.
Ayub Hossain, assistant director of DGDA, told The Daily Star on Saturday that they could file cases only under the Drugs Act-1940 and Drugs (Control) Ordinance-1982.
But there were precedents of DGDA men filing separate cases under the ordinance and the Special Powers Act for the same offence, sources said.
In 1992, DGDA first filed cases against the owners and employees of the four drug manufacturing companies under the ordinance. Then it filed cases against the companies under the Special Powers Act (SPP).
But the case filed under the SPA act was dismissed as the accused told the court that they were being tried twice for the same offence.
Bangladesh law does not allow a person to be prosecuted for the same offence twice.
Ayub, however, said, “As far as I know the cases under Special Powers Act were not filed by the DGDA.”
When 28 children had died after they were given paracetamol syrup in 2010, the DGDA filed a case against Rid Pharma for producing the toxic syrup under the ordinance. It did not file the case under Special Powers Act.
The case is under trial.
Contacted, Law Minister Anisul Huq said they cannot change or amend a law unless a proposal is sent to his ministry.
“The proposal [for amending the law] has to come from the ministry concerned. I cannot change it myself,” he told The Daily Star over the phone on Saturday.