A cough syrup is supposed to be one of the simplest things a parent gives a sick child. A few millilitres.
A spoon. A little sleep. Then recovery.
But what happens when the medicine meant to help a child contains a chemical capable of destroying their kidneys?
That question has returned to Maharashtra after the state Food and Drug Administration took action against two cough syrups, Respifresh TR and Relife, after finding toxic diethylene glycol (DEG) above permissible limits. Neither of these two syrups has been linked to the deaths that triggered the wider national alarm. But their detection is disturbing for another reason: DEG was already at the centre of the Coldrif tragedy that killed children in 2025.
And that makes Maharashtra's recent FDA activity much bigger than one drug recall.
It is a story about what happens when enforcement arrives after years of problems have already become normal.
The Chemical That Should Never Be There
Diethylene glycol is an industrial chemical and is highly toxic, so it should not be used in any medicine designed for children. The extent of the danger became horrifyingly obvious in 2025 when it was connected with child deaths in Madhya Pradesh.
The number of children initially reported to have died from kidney failure was at least 14, although later figures showed the total had risen to 17. It was discovered that Coldrif contained an unusually high level of DEG, 48.6 per cent against the allowed limit of 0.1 per cent. The deaths occurred mainly in children who had drunk the syrup before suffering from serious kidney problems.
That is the real case study behind today's concern.
These were not statistics on a laboratory report. They were children.
Parents had taken them for treatment, believing they were doing something responsible. A bottle purchased to treat an illness became part of a medical tragedy.
And now, less than a year later, Maharashtra has found the same toxic chemical in two other cough syrups.
The state's prohibition order identified Respifresh TR and Relife as containing DEG above permissible limits and classified them as adulterated and not of standard quality.
The disturbing question is therefore not simply, ‘Why were these two syrups contaminated?’
It is, ‘Why is the same failure happening again?’
This Isn't Only About Cough Syrup
While the pharmaceutical issue is the most alarming, Maharashtra's FDA has been dealing with problems across the food system too.
Take paneer.
Between April 2025 and March 2026, Maharashtra's FDA analysed 308 paneer and dairy-analogue samples. Of these, 109 failed to meet prescribed standards, 79 were classified as sub-standard, and 30 as unsafe. Laboratory analysis indicated that vegetable fat had been added to, or substituted for, milk fat in a significant number of the failed samples.
The response was a statewide, one-year ban on the manufacture, storage, transportation, distribution, and sale of analogue or non-dairy paneer.
The problem here is slightly different from contaminated medicine. Analogue paneer is not automatically poisonous simply because it is non-dairy. The concern is that products were being passed off or served as paneer without adequate disclosure, while some tested samples were unsafe. Consumers were often making a purchase believing they were getting a genuine milk product.
That is ultimately a trust problem.
You cannot inspect a paneer cube at a restaurant and know what kind of fat was used to make it.
You cannot look at a cough syrup bottle and see DEG.
Consumers are expected to trust the system.
Even Famous Names Aren't Exempt
The FDA's crackdown also reached ‘Parsi Dairy Farm’, one of Mumbai's oldest dairy establishments.
Its license was suspended after inspectors found serious hygiene and food-safety violations, including fungal growth, pest infestation, inadequate sanitation, and products missing mandatory date information. The action focused on hygiene and regulatory violations, not a finding that its products were contaminated with DEG.
That distinction matters.
Food safety cannot be reduced to whether a famous brand is trusted. A company's reputation cannot replace inspections, laboratory testing, and basic hygiene.
And then there are the children before they even get sick.
The FDA's response has also moved towards prevention.
Maharashtra introduced a statewide order to enforce the Food Safety and Standards regulations concerning safe food and balanced diets for children in schools. The framework focuses on ensuring that food available in government, aided, and private schools is hygienic, nutritious and balanced.
This is important because public health does not begin in a hospital.
It begins in a school canteen.
It begins with what a child eats every day.
It begins with whether the medicine in a parent's cupboard is actually safe.
That's why these three FDA actions belong in the same conversation.
One concerns what children are fed.
One concerns what children are given when they are sick.
And one concerns what regulators are doing to stop both problems from becoming routine.
The real impact is on trust.
For parents, the most frightening part of the Coldrif tragedy was not simply the chemical itself. It was the collapse of something they had assumed was safe.
A parent does not normally ask a pharmacist to prove that a cough syrup is free from industrial toxins.
They shouldn't have to.
Similarly, a customer ordering paneer tikka should not need a laboratory to determine whether the paneer is actually made from milk.
This is where regulation matters.
When inspections are weak, the burden silently moves from manufacturers and regulators to ordinary people. Parents become investigators. Consumers become food testers. Families learn to distrust medicines that should never have given them a reason to worry.
Maharashtra's recent crackdown is therefore welcome, but it should not become another cycle of outrage followed by silence.
The real victory will come when contaminated syrups are detected before children consume them, when adulterated food is stopped before it reaches restaurant tables, and when school food standards are enforced before unhealthy habits become lifelong ones. Because the most important question is not how aggressively the FDA can act after something goes wrong. It is whether the system can become good enough to ensure children never have to become the evidence that something went wrong in the first place.
References:
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- https://centrepsp.org
- https://economictimes.indiatimes.com
- https://ijme.in