Adulterated Drug

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High Court directs to pay Tk 15 lakh each to family of 104 children who died after consuming adulterated medicine

This instruction has been given to the Department of Drug Administration.

The Department of Drug Administration will recover the money from the person and company responsible for the deaths of the children.

Senior lawyer Manzil Morshed was in favor of the writ petition in the court. On the other side was Advocate Md. Asaduzzaman.

Advocate Manzil Morshed said that 76 children died after consuming adulterated paracetamol syrup in 1991 and 28 children after consuming Reed Pharma paracetamol in 2009. The human rights organization Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh (HRPB) filed a writ petition in the High Court in the public interest, attaching a report published in a newspaper in 2010.

The court issued a rule on the hearing of the writ petition. The court gave its verdict today after a long hearing of the rule. The verdict also directed the families of each of the 104 children to be compensated at the rate of Tk 1.5 million in case of infant death due to adulterated paracetamol. In addition, the inactivity of the Department of Drug Administration in the control of adulterated drugs has been declared illegal, and in the case of adulterated drug offenses, special powers have been directed to be taken in accordance with the law. The court also ruled that the Department of Drug Administration could not avoid liability for infant deaths due to adulterated drugs.

Meanwhile, another case was filed against five people, including the owner of a pharmaceutical company, for killing 28 children after consuming Reed Pharma's adulterated paracetamol syrup. Md Shafiqul Islam, former caretaker of the Drug Administration Department, filed the case in the Dhaka Drug Court. Following the trial of the case, the trial court acquitted the five on November 28, 2016.