Patna: Police yesterday arrested the head of a school in eastern India where 23 children died after eating a free meal laced with a lethal pesticide, an officer said.
The children, aged four to 12, fell ill within minutes of eating the lunch of lentils, potatoes and rice cooked at their primary school in village in Bihar on July 16.
“The principal surrendered... and we have arrested her for questioning,” said Sujeet Kumar, police chief of Saran district where the incident occurred.
“We need to talk to her first before framing charges,” the official said by telephone.
A first information report has been registered against her on penal charges of murder and criminal conspiracy, police said.
Minutes before she was arrested, school principal Meena Devi demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the tragedy.
Police have been searching for the teacher, Meena Devi, who apparently fled shortly after the tragedy in Gandaman village, which also left some 30 children ill in hospital and sparked angry street protests.
Saran district administrator Abhijit Sinha said that the teacher was key to resolving the issue of how the deadly chemicals ended up in the food.
“She is the right person to explain how the poison was mixed with the cooking oil,” Sinha said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar yesterday said the incident “did not look like an accident”.
“The children had pointed out that something was wrong with the food,” he said, and said he wanted to know why the food was still thrust on them.
“The accounts given by people, the forensic report, the concentration of pesticide (in the meal), all this points towards something,” he said.
The chief minister said police will probe all angles and the guilty will not be spared. “We believe everything will come to light in the police investigation.”
“It is a very sad and heart wrenching incident,” he said.
Without naming any political party, Nitish Kumar wanted to know why a shutdown was called when the children were being rushed to hospitals, and why police vehicles rushing to the site were attacked.
“This is very strange,” he said.
Nitish Kumar tried to explain why he had not visited the village where the tragedy took place. “I do not need to tell the Patna media about the condition of my leg.”
He also pledged to develop the affected village. “We can’t bring back the children who have died but we will do whatever we can for the village.”
Before her arrest, Meena Devi told a Hindi news channel in Saran: “I am innocent and (have been) framed in the case. I demand a CBI probe.”
She also denied that her husband owned a grocery shop from where food and groceries for the mid-day meal were purchased.
Earlier in the day, she filed an application for anticipatory bail in the court of the district chief judicial magistrate.
After filing the application, her lawyer said the plea was likely to come up for hearing the next day. But with her arrest, it may now prove to be a futile exercise.
Police also filed a petition in the court to attach Meena Devi’s property after obtaining her arrest warrant on July 22.
On Tuesday, a court had declared Meena Devi a proclaimed offender.
Meanwhile, three lakh school teachers in Bihar have decided to boycott the midday meal scheme from July 25 to get rid of non-academic work.
“It was unanimously decided at a meeting of the Bihar State Primary Teachers’ Association to boycott the scheme,” its president Barajnandan Sharma said.
IANS
