Drug court to give judgement Aug 13

The Dhaka Drug Court fixed August 13 for passing its judgment on adulteration of drugs by six manufacturers of BCIB.  

BCI (Bangladesh) Ltd is one of the four drug manufacturing companies that tainted Paracetamol syrup with lethal diethylene glycol, which caused renal failure of children, taking at least 76 lives in 1992.  

It took a year for the trial to come close to an end. Reluctance of the case's complainant, Abul Khair, the then superintendent of the Directorate of Drug Administration, to testify before the court obstructed the trial until he finally responded to the court's summon issued for the 19th time last August.

Khair was sent to jail from the court and was released days later only after he pledged to submit to the court all documents required.  

Public Prosecutor Nadim Miah is hopeful of getting the accused, only one of the six being present, punished for the crime committed decades ago.   

The only present accused, Shahjahan Sarker, director of the company, faces punishment of 10 years' imprisonment if he is found guilty.

Trial against the companies resumed in 2009 after an investigation following a probe of The Daily Star revealing that HC stays kept the trials pending for 16 years. The newspaper also exposed how corruption and manipulation had been delaying the trial.

However, it was not until 2011 that the BCIB trial started.

In December 1992, a chemical analysis by the government, with help from the WHO, proved that paracetamol syrups manufactured by five companies -- Adflame Pharmaceutical Ltd, Polychem Laboratories Ltd, BCI (Bangladesh) Ltd, Rex Pharmaceutical, and City Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works Ltd -- contained diethylene glycol.

The results of subsequent independent testing -- undertaken in laboratories in the US and obtained by The Daily Star -- confirmed the results.

Two cases were filed against six employees of BCIB after two batches of the company's paracetamol syrup “Paracem” was found containing more than 25 percent diethylene glycol.

City Chemical was never charged while owners of Rex Pharma got acquitted in 2003 from the Mymensingh drug court as the prosecution deliberately refrained from presenting the government-run test results.  

In the country's first-ever judgment on drug adulteration, the Dhaka Drug Court handed 10 years of imprisonment to an owner and two officials of Adflame Pharmaceuticals Ltd for producing tainted syrup branded Flammadol.

According to a survey by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, disclosed in the 1990s, as many as 2,700 children died due to renal failure after taking toxic syrup from 1982 to 1992.