The Madhya Pradesh Government has provoked fury and disbelief by quietly reinstating a deputy controller of the State’s Drug Administration, Shobhit Koshta, just four days after he was suspended in connection with the Chhindwara cough syrup disaster that claimed the lives of 24 children.
The reinStatement order, signed by Additional Chief Secretary (Health and Medical Education), returns the very official accused of oversight failures to his post at the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in Bhopal — an action many see as a brazen act of protection for an official alleged to have presided over regulatory dereliction that cost young lives.
The chilling facts of the Chhindwara case are straightforward: a cough syrup — later found to be toxic — was administered to children in Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, resulting in mass illness and the deaths of two dozen minors.
Laboratory and field investigations point to gross violations of drug quality and manufacturing norms.
Instead of swift, visible accountability for those whose duties include safeguarding drug quality, the State has chosen to rehabilitate one of the officers singled out for failing to enforce crucial inspections and safety protocols.
That decision has ignited outrage among bereaved families, health professionals and anti-corruption activists.
Officials attempting to justify the reversal have leaned on the stale argument that the reinStated officer’s ‘experience’ is needed at headquarters.
That defence has been universally derided in health and administrative circles as a fig leaf for political interference.
“Experience is not a licence to preside over preventable deaths,” said a senior public health specialist who asked not to be named.
“Reinstating him so soon after 24 children died is a betrayal of every duty-holder tasked with protecting public health.”
The move also exposes the structural rot within the State’s drug regulatory apparatus. The FDA in Madhya Pradesh is chronically understaffed: of 532 sanctioned posts, 118 remain vacant.
That shortfall has left inspection schedules fragmented, laboratories overburdened, and enforcement responses sluggish.
Activists and insiders warn that bringing back a suspended officer under these conditions will only deepen institutional complacency and send a signal that negligence carries no real consequence when it suits power.
The State had announced a probe to trace the supply chain and hold those responsible to account, but the rapid reinStatement has already undermined public confidence in the inquiry’s independence.
Families of the deceased, who hoped suspension of officials would be the first step toward justice, now watch in disbelief as the machinery of governance appears to shield its own. “We buried our children and the State brought back the man who should have been investigated,” said one mother, her voice raw with loss.
This is not merely an administrative misstep; it is a moral collapse. The decision to restore a suspended official within days of a catastrophe that killed 24 children reduces accountability to a negotiable political convenience.
It tells citizens, loudly and clearly, that in Madhya Pradesh bureaucracy, the lives of the vulnerable can be traded for patronage and preservation of the status quo.
