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Bern and Basel: two complaints against Syngenta, 2020 to 2022

Published 7 October 2026

By 2020 the Yavatmal poisonings had moved out of Maharashtra's courts and committees and into two Swiss forums. Both are described here with the word "alleged" attached to their central claims, because Syngenta denies that its product Polo caused the poisonings and no court has made a finding on the merits. Public Eye's page on the matter states the position of the complainants and the company in two sentences: that Polo "played a significant role" in the 2017 affair as Public Eye reported at the time, and that Syngenta "has repeatedly talked down or even fully denied its share of responsibility".

The first forum was an OECD complaint. According to Public Eye, on Thursday, September 17, 2020, the Pesticide Action Networks of India and of Asia Pacific, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin (ECCHR) and Public Eye filed what is called a specific instance with the Swiss National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in Bern. They filed it together with the Maharashtra Association of Pesticide Poisoned Persons (MAPPP), on behalf of affected agricultural families. The page says the filing examined the cases of 51 farmers who reported using Polo from September to October 2017.

The complaint's account of harm was specific. Public Eye wrote that all 51 required medical treatment, that 43 were hospitalised, most for between one day and two weeks, nine for over two weeks and one for 31 days, and that 44 of the 51 reported temporary blindness. It said 16 were unconscious for between several hours and several days, most were unable to work for long periods, a few for up to a year, and 28 reported ongoing health problems, including neurological and muscular problems. Some had medical certificates, the page said. These are the complainants' figures about their own clients, from the filing, and they were not tested by the NCP at that stage.

The complainants also relied on a record from the Maharashtra police. Public Eye said that official documents seen by the complaining organisations in India, Germany and Switzerland indicated the scale of poisoning linked to Polo was far greater than previously thought: in 2017 the police recorded 96 cases of poisoning linked to Polo, and in 36 of them Polo was the only agent used. ECCHR's press release of December 15, 2020 added that two of the 96 cases led to fatalities. The same two sources do not say how many poisonings the police recorded in total in 2017, so the 96 is a count of cases the police linked to one product, from a document the complainants described and the public has not seen.

Press coverage in India reported the filing within a day. Firstpost described it as a landmark move by victims of contact poisoning against the Swiss-based company in two separate instances, with PAN India and others assisting. It said that in 2017 "over 60 farmers died" and hundreds were affected in Yavatmal and other districts. That figure covers Maharashtra, while the state gave 62 and 63. The Firstpost text blends the district and the state in its lead sentence.

The second forum was a Swiss civil court. The Hindu BusinessLine reported on September 18, 2020 that three farmers from Yavatmal had filed a civil suit in Basel on Thursday seeking monetary compensation. Two of the applicants were women who claimed they lost their husbands to poisoning while spraying Polo in 2017. The Swiss lawyer Silvio Riesen told the paper the claims were that the pesticide was deficient under Swiss product liability law and that the company did not inform farmers sufficiently about the risks. He said there were three separate claims but possibly one trial, and that a conciliation process came first.

Where sources differ, ECCHR dates the Basel civil filing differently. Its press release of Thursday, July 28, 2022 says that in June 2021 the wives of two farmers who died and a survivor of a severe case of poisoning submitted a civil lawsuit at the civil court of Basel, after a compulsory mediation at the peace judge had ended without agreement. The BusinessLine report of September 2020 is consistent with the start of the compulsory conciliation, which the lawyer described, rather than the filing before the court of first instance. The record therefore treats September 2020 as the start of the Swiss civil route and June 2021 as the lawsuit before the Basel court, as ECCHR states.

The legal theory is set out by the Justice Pesticides database, which calls it the first product liability lawsuit of its kind. Its entry says the two widows blame Syngenta for the deaths of their husbands and an Indian farmer blames it for his illness after Polo was sprayed on their fields. They claim the product is defective under the Swiss Product Liability Act, in particular because Syngenta knew agricultural workers in India usually do not read the instructions on the package and so could not use the pesticide correctly. The entry says it was possible to file in Switzerland. These are the plaintiffs' claims as the database records them.

The OECD complaint moved first. ECCHR announced on December 15, 2020 that the Swiss National Contact Point had accepted the complaint, which enabled both parties to enter mediation. The release stressed what the decision was not: "today's decision is not a recognition that Syngenta has violated the OECD Guidelines," it said, but the NCP concluded the issues merited further consideration and offered its good offices. Dileep Kumar of PAN India said the decision "raises a lot of expectations among the group of 51 farmers that the company will finally recognize the role its product Polo played in the poisonings."

The release also said Syngenta had categorically denied responsibility, claiming there was "absolutely no evidence" Polo caused the poisoning, and noted that in December 2019 Syngenta had itself asked that the allegations be submitted to the Swiss NCP to start an OECD complaint. A lawyer for ECCHR, Saage-Maaß, was quoted asking Syngenta to live up to its own call for a constructive mediation. This is the complainants' account of the company's earlier stance, and the company's reply to the release is not in the document.

Mediation then ran through 2021. According to ECCHR's release of Friday, June 17, 2022, four mediation meetings were held in 2021 and the process ended with no agreement. The release said the NCP closed the mediation with no outcome, that Syngenta refused to discuss whether Polo caused the alleged poisonings, and that no agreement was reached on remedy or on measures to prevent future poisonings. Public Eye's own release on the same day used the same account.

The reason, as the complainants gave it, was the other case. ECCHR wrote that Syngenta repeatedly asserted it could not discuss whether Polo had caused the poisonings because of judicial proceedings before a Swiss civil court, and that the NCP followed this argument. PAN India quoted the NCP statement of June 16, 2022 as saying that "the question of whether Polo caused the intoxication of the farmers cannot be discussed until the conclusion of the judicial proceedings." On this point the company's position, as reported by its opponents, was procedural. It did not say Polo was safe in those words, and the sources do not carry a company statement on the mediation's close.

The complainants were sharply critical. Dewanand Pawar, on behalf of MAPPP, said the farmers and families were "severely disappointed and distressed in the absence of a tangible outcome after making painstaking efforts over four years to reach this international forum". Sarojeni Rengam of PAN Asia Pacific called it "a troubling outcome, as Syngenta once more evaded accountability". The UN Special Rapporteur Marcos Orellana was quoted by ECCHR saying the 51 farmers "should not be deprived of their right to access remedy through a non-judicial process simply because another group of victims chose to file a civil lawsuit". These are statements by interested parties and an independent expert's comment as quoted by one of them.

PAN India's account says all 51 complainants required medical treatment, with reduced vision, gastrointestinal problems, weakness and reduced capacity to work persisting after hospitalisation, and that economic conditions had deteriorated dramatically, with "scant financial relief" from the government of Maharashtra for the chronic cases. That claim sits against the compensation record, which covers death cases. It was PAN's view that the provision of remedy by Syngenta had become "a matter of both justice and survival". The complainants' demands included that Syngenta stop selling Polo, and implement a key provision of the FAO code on protective equipment.

The Basel case moved separately. ECCHR's July 2022 release reported that the Basel civil court had ruled it had jurisdiction and granted legal aid to all three plaintiffs, and that it would treat the three cases separately, not as one, because different evidentiary questions might arise in each. "There is thus no decision on the merits of the case," the release stated, and it said the ruling "sends the clear message that the Swiss judicial system will deal with cases brought by victims of corporate harm abroad but caused by Swiss companies." The plaintiffs were represented by a Basel firm, Schadenanwaelte, according to the release, which claimed that the active ingredient came directly from Switzerland.

The Times of India reported on the legal aid ruling in Nagpur on August 24, 2022. It quoted Narasimha Reddy of PAN saying the legal aid came through a Swiss government scheme after scrutiny of the merits and the plaintiffs' financial capacity, and that the decision had come over a month earlier. It quoted Sahebrao Pawar, an activist, saying that if the Swiss government is providing aid, "even the Indian government should take a cue from it. There needs to be action at home as well." He accused Indian authorities of remaining indifferent. That is an activist's criticism as quoted, and the paper carries no response from Indian officials.

The same report noted the context: the state government had formed a special team, there had been stress on safe use, and Syngenta had become one of the coordinators of an awareness campaign, according to the paper's text. The paper's wording differs from Public Eye's, which said it could not find anyone Syngenta had trained or equipped. Where sources differ, these are two descriptions of the same company's activity in the district, one from a Nagpur daily's summary and one from a Swiss NGO's interviews, and the record gives no verdict.

The count of dead also varies across the Swiss-side sources. ECCHR, Public Eye and the OECD materials say 23 died in autumn 2017. The Times of India in 2025 says 22. Public Eye's 2018 report said over 20. The SIT-era Hindu feature said 21 in Yavatmal district. Each owner counted differently or at a different date, and the sources do not give the lists of names that would settle them. No total is offered here.

The table sets out the two Swiss routes as the sources record them.

By the summer of 2022, then, one forum had closed without an outcome and the other had cleared its first hurdle. The company had not conceded anything in either. Whether Polo was in the bodies and the cotton fields of the three plaintiffs was the question the Basel court would turn to next.

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