Marion Biotech stops production of cough syrup linked to death of 18 kids in Uzbekistan, CDSCO initiates probe

Hasan Harris, legal representative of Marion Biotech, said the governments of both countries are looking into the matter and inquiring.

"There is no problem from our end and no issue in testing. We have been there for the past ten years. Once the government report will come, we will look into it. For now the manufacturing has stopped," Harris said. Babbar said on December 27, an inspection was carried out by a team of the Centre in which samples of five medicines were taken for testing.

"A further round of investigation is pending for which we have come here today," he said.

"The company does not have any domestic market and has only one export market which is Uzbekistan. No product (Doc-1 Max) has been sold in India," the drug inspector told PTI.

The company is currently operational and they have all mandatory licenses and approvals, including certificate of pharmaceutical product (CoPP) for export which is granted by the Centre, he said.

"Now the investigation underway is to find out from where they procured the raw material and where all it has been used," he said.

The company has been operational since 2010, he added.

Meanwhile, when checked by PTI, the website of Marion Biotech became inaccessible Thursday morning.

"Error establishing a database connection (sic)," read a message on the homepage of marionbiotech.com.