The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), the top drug regulatory authority of India, has launched an inquiry and alerted the Haryana government last week after learning about The Gambia tragedy, said state government officials.

Thursday’s joint inspection of the pharmaceutical company, the third in the past six days, comes after the central and state teams collected samples on October 1 and 3. It comes a day after the WHO officially issued a medical product alert over four cold-and-cough syrups and cautioned that they could be linked to acute kidney injuries and the deaths of the 66 children in the West African nation.

Rakesh Dahiya, Sonepat-based senior drug inspector, said that five samples were collected in the last one week and sent to the Central Drugs Laboratory in Kolkata for examination.

Haryana health minister Anil Vij said all four syrups in question were manufactured for export only and not marketed in India.

“It has been decided by the central and state governments that we should first get these cough syrup samples tested indigenously before arriving at a conclusion,” said Vij. “Further action will be taken subsequently.”

A Haryana government official said the probe into the matter was started on October 1 after the Centre alerted the state health department. “The company in question is a small-scale unit and during the joint inspection and as per the standard operating procedure, all necessary samples and documents were collected,” added the official, requesting anonymity.

Documents, including the company’s reports of stability studies of the product and the list of vendors, were being scrutinised, said the official.

Manmohan Taneja, state drugs controller, Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), said all operations of the company, including its export, will remain suspended until the report of the collected samples arrive. “It is a matter of investigation whether the deaths in the African nation were linked to the products made by Maiden Pharmaceuticals,” said Taneja. “The investigation is at a preliminary stage.”

“The government will take action only once the Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) report comes,” added Taneja.

HT team visited the Maiden Pharmaceuticals unit at Kundli in Haryana’s Sonepat district on Thursday, but the security guards said the entry of outsiders was barred and that renovation work was underway. A placard pasted on the company’s main gates also said ‘plant under renovation’. According to the security guards, the company has over 100 employees.

At its corporate office in north-west Delhi’s Pitampura, the security guards said the office was not open. The entrance of the building that houses the company’s office on the 12th floor was locked. The corporate office has been operational from the building for the past seven years.

“This is their corporate office. Their manufacturing unit is in Haryana. Around 10-12 employees sit here. They were working till Tuesday. Yesterday being a public holiday due to Dussehra, I assume they were shut too,” said an employee of a law firm that shares the floor space with Maiden Pharmaceuticals’ office. “Since this (Thursday) morning, we have not seen anyone here.”

HT called on two mobile numbers that were displayed at the entrance of the company. After several enquiries about the caller and reason for calling, the first man whose phone number was displayed, said, “I left the company two months back.”

The second number was also answered by a man, who said he was an employee of the pharma company did not know about the details of operations. “The export team of the company will be in a better position to answer these questions,” he said. “I am not in the city now.”

The company’s website says it has two manufacturing units in Kundli and Panipat and that it is “WHO-GMP certified”. One of the company’s four directors, Naresh Kumar Goyal, told news agency Reuters: “We are trying to find out with the buyer and all that what has happened exactly. We are not selling anything in India.”

The company has been making and supplying medical products for over 30 years and has a presence across multiple countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Russia, according to its website. The company’s date of incorporation is November 22, 1990.

It has an annual production capacity of 2.2 million syrup bottles, 600 million capsules, 18 million injections, 300,000 ointment tubes and 1.2 billion tablets.