Conspiracy behind tragedy, alleges minister

“All the food items used to brought from his grocery shop. It is a matter of an inquiry how poison was used”

IANS/Patna

Bihar Education Minister P K Shahi yesterday said there could have been a conspiracy to poison the mid-day meal in the school that killed 25 children in Saran district.

Shahi told the media that autopsies of the children revealed that organo-phosphorous had been injected into the meal.

“It is painful that children died after eating the meal. But it can be a conspiracy,” he said.

The minister alleged that the school principal’s husband, Arjun Rai, belonged to an opposition party.

“All the food items used to brought from his grocery shop. It is a matter of an inquiry how poison was used,” Shahi said.

Meanwhile, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) yesterday called for closer monitoring of the mid-day meal scheme while expressing shock over the deaths.

“It is deeply shocking that the mid-day meal scheme has claimed the lives of so many children. The government needs to closely monitor the scheme through regular inspections in schools,” NCPCR chairperson Kushal Singh said.

“We have been taking up the issue with various state governments as there have been incidents where children have fallen ill after eating their meals in schools,” Kushal Singh said.

She added that not only the people who cook the meals but also the agency supervising the entire process need to be held accountable for such incidents.

“The school management committee which needs to monitor and supervise the meal is not present in most of the schools. Proper inspection is required. In many places the inspections are done occasionally but it should be done on daily basis,” she added.

Save the Children, an NGO working for children’s rights, urged the government to set up education panels at the grassroots level to prevent such incidents.

“Such cases play a negative role and hamper our efforts to help the socially and economically marginalised children complete their education. Cases like these force the parents to re-think sending their children to government schools. The need is to set up education committees at the grassroots level,” Sanjeev Rai, national manager for education, Save The Children, said.

Referring to the deaths of children in Bihar, Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research, said innocent lives have been lost due to the “carelessness” of the state government.

“The chief minister should be held accountable and a criminal procedure should be initiated against the culprits. The whole idea of the mid-day meal hasn’t worked out and a serious review of this scheme is required,” Kumari stressed

Meanwhile, a mob smashed windows of police buses and other vehicles and turned over a police booth in Chhapra, the main city of Saran district where the school is located.

“Hundreds of angry people staged a protest in Saran, demanding stern action against government officials responsible for this shocking incident,” said district government official S K Mall.

Media reports quoted villagers as saying the use of contaminated, foul-smelling mustard oil for cooking at the school could also have caused the deaths.