India firm denies tampering with tests in probe of cough syrup deaths zawya.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from zawya.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
India's Maiden Pharmaceuticals, whose cough syrups have been linked to the deaths of children in Gambia, on Saturday denied it had tampered with test samples or bribed officials to do so, as alleged in a complaint under investigation by local health officials. An investigator with the state of Haryana's Food and Drug Administration told Reuters on Friday he was close to finishing a probe into whether a state drug regulator was bribed to switch samples, tested by the Indian government, that contradicted the World Health Organization's findings of toxic substances in the cough syrups. "I have never changed the sample," Maiden founder Naresh Kumar Goyal told Reuters.
India is close to finishing an investigation into a "comprehensive and exhaustive" complaint that a state drug regulator, in return for a bribe, helped switch samples of cough syrups linked to the deaths of children in Gambia before the samples were tested in India, the investigator told Reuters. While the World Health Organization (WHO) linked the syrups made by India's Maiden Pharmaceuticals to the deaths of 70 children in the African country last year, India's government says tests at an Indian government laboratory showed the syrups were not toxic. Reuters reported in June that in an April 29 letter to the Anti-Corruption Bureau in Haryana state, where Maiden has its factory, a lawyer named Yashpal accused the state's drug controller, Manmohan Taneja, of taking a bribe of 50 million rupees ($600,687) from Maiden to help switch the samples before they went for tests at the government laboratory.
Like many other Muslims, Indian tailor Safi Mohammad plans to send his wife and two sons away before thousands of pilgrims arrive at his hometown of Ayodhya next month for the inauguration of one of Hinduism's most sacred temples. The temple, built on a site Hindus believe to be the birthplace of Lord Ram and where a Mughal-era mosque once stood, stirs bitter memories for Mohammad. The 38-year-old said he remembers when a Hindu mob destroyed the Babri mosque in December 1992, sparking religious riots across the country that killed nearly 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.
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