Indian children light candles in tribute to 23 children who died from poisoned food. [AFP Photo]
AFP
written by Staff
Friday July 18, 2013
PATNA, India — Grieving parents attacked a headteacher's house in eastern India to protest the deaths of 23 pupils who ate a poisoned school lunch and the response by officials to the tragedy, police and witnesses said Friday.
Parents also angrily protested outside the community hall in the village in Bihar state, where the children died after being served a meal, apparently laced with insecticide, on Tuesday, a senior policeman said.
"There was ransacking of the principal's house," Superintendent Sujit Kumar told AFP.
"There were sporadic incidents of violence," added Kumar.
The deputy development commissioner of Saran district, which oversees the school meal programme, said that local officers had also briefed him on the unrest.
"Our teams on the ground reported that angry parents did try to damage the house of the headmistress," Raman Kumar told AFP.
Surendra Rai, who was one of the parents who took part in the attack on headmistress Meena Kumari's home, said there was widespread anger both towards the teacher and the police.
"Why have the police not been able to arrest the headmistress who forced our children to eat poisonous food? She should be killed," said Rai, whose daughter was among those who died in the tragedy.
An AFP reporter on the scene said he saw windows of the home smashed, while anguished parents also protested outside the government community centre in the village.
Many of the victims, aged four to 12, from Gandaman village, were buried on a playing field adjacent to the primary school that served the free meal of rice, lentils and potatoes -- the only meal of the day for many.
Some 24 children and a cook remain sick in a hospital in the state capital Patna, an official said.
Authorities said they are probing whether the food or the cooking oil was accidentally or deliberately poisoned.
Officials said Thursday it appeared from post mortem results that the food was contaminated with a pesticide. The results of more detailed tests on the ingredients are expected to be ready later Friday.
Rai said his eight-year-old daughter had died within minutes of eating the lunch, echoing stories from other parents who said their children perished in their arms before they could get them to hospital.
India runs the world's largest school feeding programme, involving 120 million children, and Bihar is one of India's most populated and poorest states.
Educators see the scheme as a way to increase school attendance, in a country where almost half of all young children are undernourished. But children throughout the country often suffer from food poisoning due to poor hygiene in kitchens and occasionally sub-standard food.
Police officer Kumar said they had earlier raided the home of Kumari, who fled with her husband and brother-in-law when they saw children falling ill in the school.
"We found bags of fertilisers and pesticides kept next to bags of potato and rice in the headmistress's house," Kumar told AFP.
"She was an educated woman, so why was she storing poison and food together?"
Parents said the headmistress had invited every child from the village to attend school on Tuesday as she wanted to distribute free books and uniforms.
"I sent my daughter hoping she would get all the books for the year but she never came home," said Ajay Kumar, a farmer whose five-year-old daughter was among the victims.
A large field at the front of the school where the pupils used to play has been turned into a mass graveyard, where many of the children have been buried in protest at the tragedy.
Mounds dot the field marking individual graves where children were laid to rest, many along with their favourite toys.
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