India | 20 Children Die After Eating Poisoned Midday Meal at Bihar School

[Faline]

Crazy shit.

[Megamel29]

I'll try to find the article I read earlier, but it said that it was oil that contained pesticides. I need to find the article again so I can verify, but allegedly the head mistress is married to a grocery store manager and she got the oil from him, and a search of their house revealed potatoes sitting next to pesticides. So some are thinking it wasn't intentional but was accidental or due to ignorance. I'm going to look for the article now.

[Megamel29]

Ok I found the article, but it's by the Telegraph. I don't know if that's reputable or not.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...oned-food.html

Shortly after her instruction, the cook collapsed and 90 minutes later the first victim, Anshu Kumar, aged four-and-a-half, died on his way to hospital.
Investigators believe the mustard oil used in cooking the meal had been contaminated with poisonous organophosphate pesticides.
The scale of the tragedy provoked violent protests from parents and relatives in Chappra, Bihar, one of India's poorest states, and anger throughout the country.
Several parents of the dead have buried their bodies in front of the school in protest.
"We decided to bury our children in front of the school building to remind the government that they died because of their negligence," said Madav Ram, whose 12-year-old son Rahul was among the victims. "We tend to forget every incident because of which the authorities do not care about us. We also plan to raise a memorial in the memory of the dead children inside the school."

The Midday Meal Scheme is the world's largest and serves free lunches to 120 million pupils throughout India. Many parents send their children to school primarily for the free meal, but there have been widespread complaints of substandard and rotten food.
District Magistrate Abhishek Sinha told The Daily Telegraph that he believes many of the children who ate the meal at Dharmashati-Gandaman primary school on Tuesday may have been saved had the headmistress, who is now on the run, tasted the food before it was served, as required under the scheme's rules. He said an adult would have survived the tasting but the children, aged four to ten, were more vulnerable because of their low body weight.
The head, identified as Meena Devi, had been in charge of buying the food for the scheme with government funds.
Police Superintendent Sujeet Kumar said the school's cook, Manju Devi, had warned the headmistress that the oil may have been contaminated after it began emitting a foul smell during cooking.
"The headmistress said 'continue cooking and serve the food to the children. There is certainly negligence on the part of the headmistress, whether criminal by design or carelessness is under investigation," he said.
Several children approached the cook after she had served them to say it had a strange taste. One girl, 11 year old Pinki Kumari, told the Times of India she had been reprimanded when she complained. "When I complained that it's bitter I was scolded and told 'you people always complain, we'll serve what the government gives us,'" she said.
The cook then tasted the food and collapsed soon after. She and two of her children who study at the school were taken to hospital but are now stable.
Superintendent Kumar said he was waiting for forensic test results to confirm the substance which had poisoned the children.

[CuriousOne]

Jesus christ... Such unnecessary death from this. I like that the parents buried their kids in front of the school as a reminder...good for them.

[Kelseecat65]

"Many parents send their children to school primarily for the free meal"
That's heartbreaking - yet if people are that bad off, why the hell are they having children?!?

[JustifiableHomicide]

Why do you think you never see fat Indians? They are all on the brink of starvation. And blowing loads of curry out your ass nightly probably doesn't help either..

[Kanda444]

poor things fuck... how sad...