A village in mourning
Their parents had sent them to school so they could learn and get hot food, but minutes after 47 children in Bihar, India, began tucking into their lunch, they collapsed in agony. Twenty three of them died. Jalees Andrabi and Anand Raj OK report on the fo
Around 100 schoolchildren sat in two neat rows on the veranda of their primary school, which also doubled as a dining room, staring at the plates of rice and potato curry in front of them.
Part of the midday meal scheme in the Dharmasati Gandaman Middle school in Saran, Bihar, the food had been freshly prepared and smelt delicious but the children were hesitant.
“Go ahead. It’s safe,’’ the teacher said. But the children still sat there, mute, unwilling to be the first to take a mouthful.
Realising that none of them would eat unless she did, the teacher leant forward and, using her fingers, took a little food and ate it. Her face was apprehensive as she swallowed.
Seeing the worried look made some of the children giggle, but others were still staring at their plates nervously. The teacher glared and finally, one child took a mouthful.
When that child swallowed and smiled, another followed, then another. Soon they were all busy chatting and laughing as they tucked into their meals.
The classmates were not fussy children – they were all scared to eat the governmentsponsored lunch that had poisoned their brothers, sisters and friends barely six months earlier in a primary school half a kilometre away from where they were now.
Although the school where the tragedy occurred was shut down and its children joined the Middle school, initially the villagers were adamant that their youngsters would not be allowed to have the midday meals from the new school. It has taken a lot of persuasion by government officials to get them to allow their children to have the meals.
They are not the only ones. Since 23 children of the Primary school in adjoining Masrak, Bihar, died after eating a meal that was laced with a deadly pesticide in July this year, parents, students and teachers across India have become increasingly wary of meals prepared at schools.
“Sometimes we first feed a little of the food to stray dogs or cats, wait for a few minutes to see their reaction, and then give it to children and eat ourselves,’’ says a teacher at a school in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. “But we are also a lot more careful when preparing the food.’’
Nearly six months after the tragedy, ghastly reminders are still evident in the Masrak school yard: mounds where the bodies of three children lie buried are still clearly visible; a school bag full of books and school stationery still lies forlorn, thrown aside in the haste to rush the children to hospital...
“That day [July 16] was a dreadful day,’’ says grieving father Binod Mahato, who had sent three of his four children to school. Too poor to give them a proper meal, Binod and his wife Buchi Devi were happy that the youngsters could have at least one square meal a day as well as an education at the school.
Sitting at the entrance of his grass shack home now, he wipes away tears with the back of his hand as he recalls how his older children – Aarti, eight, Shanti, six, and Vikas, five – got ready for school that day.
“I still remember them bidding goodbye and skipping off to school,’’ says the 32-year-old farmer. “Little did I know I would never see them alive again.’’
That day, like any other, he was preparing to leave for work on a neighbour’s farm while his wife, Buchi, 30, and 18-month-old daughter Sandhya Kumari, remained at home.
“The school is less than a kilometre away and the children used to walk there along with their friends in the neighbourhood,’’ he says.
“After they set off to school, I kissed goodbye to my little daughter who was busy playing with some toys on the floor and left for work.’’
The two-room school, which is near a small lake in the village 170km from Bihar’s capital Patna, had 79 eight- to 11-year-olds crammed into the stuffy classroom the day of the tragedy.
At noon, the bell rang and the children pushed aside their books and rushed out of the classrooms for lunch. While 32 ran off home for their meal, the remaining 47 sat in an
orderly row on the veranda just outside their classrooms waiting for the cooks to serve the food that had been prepared in a makeshift kitchen just outside the school building...
Healthy origins
The midday meal scheme has its origins in pre-independence India. In 1925, the British began a noon meal scheme for poor children in Madras, now Chennai, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to encourage school attendance and to ensure the poor children received at least one proper meal a day.
Over the years its popularity spread and many other states followed suit. Today more than 120 million children in the country receive these free meals every school day.
The benefits have been many: One is that school attendance of girls has increased. In many rural areas of India, girls are expected to stay at home to help with chores and prepare food for their father and brothers, their mothers often going away to work on fields. But with schools providing meals to students, girls no longer need to stay home and cook so are able to attend classes.
A recent report by Farzana Afridi of Syracuse University and the Delhi School of Economics revealed that at a cost of just Rs18 (Dh1) per child per school day, the scheme helped reduce the daily protein deficiency of a primary school student by 100 per cent. This has helped in reducing the burden on the already strained healthcare system for children in the country.
And usually the children enjoy the meals, as Binod says, “Our children looked forward to the midday meal at school and would never fail to tell us what they had for lunch every day.”
But on the fateful day, as the children at the school were waiting for the food to be served, the school’s cooks Manju Devi and Panna Devi smelt something suspicious in it.
“There is a foul smell emanating from the food,’’ one of them reportedly told the headmistress, Meena Kumari.
But in her haste to get the children served so they could eat and return to their class, Meena, 42, who has since been arrested and charged with murder and gross negligence, refused to heed the warning and ordered that the food – rice, soya bean nuggets and potato curry – be served to the students.
A few of the children also reportedly complained of the foul smell, but they soon forgot about it and began having their meal.
Barely a few minutes later, all 47 pupils who ate the food started complaining of severe stomach cramps, then began to vomit and collapse, the cook who also had the meal, told the police from her hospital bed. She survived.
Investigations would later reveal that the food contained traces of organophosporus, a lethal pesticide.
Hearing the cries of the children, local people came running and immediately rushed the sick children to a nearby hospital by whatever means of transport they could find – motorbikes, bicycles, rickshaws.
But so toxic was the pesticide in the food, that in some cases death came almost instantly, with children dying in their parents’ arms even as they were being taken to the hospital. The headmistress, scared after seeing the children fall ill, fled the school and went into hiding.
“It was a friend who came running to the farm where I was working to tell me that children were falling ill at school and were being rushed to Chapra Hospital,” says Binod.
“I told him to inform my wife who was at home about it and then began running as fast as my legs could carry me before hitching a ride on a friend’s bike to the hospital, which was a couple of kilometres away.’’ The scene Binod found at the government hospital of Chapra
was truly horrifying. While some parents were rushing in carrying near-lifeless children in their arms, others were wailing for the children they had lost. In the emergency section, some children were lying on stretchers, while a few were being given intravenous drips.
One distraught father was telling a TV reporter how two of his children had come running home crying that their stomachs hurt. “I took them in my arms but they kept crying saying the pain was unbearable. Both died minutes later and before they could reach the hospital. Oh, why did I ever send them to school?’’ he cried.
Binod was rushing around the hospital hoping and praying that his children would be safe. “It was dreadful,’’ he says. “People were wailing and screaming, women were beating their breasts and pulling their hair in despair. I had no idea what to expect, and seeing the other families made me feel even more terrified. My heart started beating fast as I looked around for my children. I was hoping they would be safe but when I spotted them I couldn’t control the tears, they looked so ill.
“I picked them up and hugged them; I held them in my lap not knowing how to help them. Their mouths were frothing and they were writhing in pain.’’
Binod pleaded with the doctors to help save his children. But while they tried their best, giving them medication, it wasn’t enough.
“My children died in front of me – within half an hour of arriving at the hospital. I can’t forget the sight. It comes to my mind every time I close my eyes. It’s a nightmare that will stay with me forever – an awful nightmare.’’
By the end of the second day, 23 children had died. The rest of the children were lucky to survive but had to spend several days in hospital recuperating.
According to reports, the hospital was illequipped to deal with such a large number of food-poisoning cases and didn’t have sufficient medicine. While they provided the best care they could, it was clearly not enough.
A government official was quoted as saying that if the poisoning was a result of food having spoilt, the number of fatalities would have been far fewer. But the pesticide that got mixed with the food was extremely toxic and the children had no chance of surviving.
“They were too young to die. They were innocent,’’ sobs Binod’s wife Buchi. The inconsolable couple are now left with only one child, Sandhya Kumari, a little girl who they dote on and are too terrified to allow out of their sight.
“She is the only one we have and we will never ever allow her to eat anything other that what we have cooked at home,’’ says Binod.
Fighting for justice
The deaths triggered angry protests with hundreds of villagers taking to the streets and demanding that those responsible for the crime be caught and punished. Angry villagers smashed windows of police vehicles, torched a government car and destroyed a police booth.
The government immediately launched a high-level investigation into the incident and even promised Rs200,000 each to the next of kin of the victims.
“But how can some money bring back the lives of my children?’’ asks Binod. “Nothing can replace my lovely children.’’
Chanda Devi, a mother of eight whose two sons Rahul, nine, and Prahlad, five, died in the school’s food poisoning, is also still reeling.
Frail and numb with the pain, she is unable to come to terms with the tragedy that snatched away her loved ones. The
42-year-old mother had hoped to see them finish school and flourish in jobs. “I believed I was providing them with a better future,” she says. “I had dreams of them getting good jobs and enjoying a good life. But now all those dreams and aspirations have been shattered.
“I regret sending them to school,’’ she says, echoing a communal sentiment. “At least if they were at home they’d be safe, they may have been illiterate but they would have been alive. I feel losing them is my punishment for making the wrong decision. How do I ever get over this?’’
Rahul died at the school minutes after eating the meal, while Prahlad died in the hospital after struggling for nearly four hours. “I didn’t give birth to them to lose them so young and in such a tragic way,’’ cries Chanda.
Contamination catastrophe
A forensic laboratory confirmed that the poisoning occurred because the cooking oil had been stored in a used pesticide container.
Due to lack of space in the small village primary school, the meal ingredients were reportedly stored at the headmistress Meena Kumari’s house and from there were transported to the school on a daily basis.
Some reports say that Meena’s husband, Arjun Rai, had purchased the pesticide and stored it in the same room where items for cooking the midday meal were also kept.
The state education minister, PK Shahi, told the media that the oil used for cooking had been bought from the grocery story run by Arjun.
Police initially protected the principal’s home after angry villagers attempted to set it on fire. Meena, who had fled the village, evaded arrest for nine days. She was eventually caught by the police hiding at a relative’s house in a neighbouring village.
Following complaints from the villagers, cases were filed against the school headmistress and her husband. The two were charged with murder of the 23 children and could face the death penalty if convicted. The case is still ongoing.
In protest against the government’s inability to prevent the incident and the school authorities’ negligence in preparing the food, Rahul and Prahlad, two of the children who died, were buried in the school yard.
“We want their graves to serve as a reminder that the children died due to state negligence,’’ says a villager.
The remaining bodies were laid to rest near the small lake overlooking the primary school, a place that had once provided hope but now simply serves as daily reminder of loss.
Parents visit the graves regularly and sprinkle flowers and sweets over them. A few parents also left behind their children’s books, clothes and some toys by the grave, not wanting to be reminded of the huge loss they suffered.
An unprecedented incident
While this is not the first time that the government’s midday meal scheme has come under fire, the Bihar school incident was unprecedented because of the number of children it claimed.
Across India, there have been reports of worms, small snakes and even nails being found in midday meals served to children.
In fact, even after the Masrak incident, 15 more children were reported to have fallen ill in another part of the state after they ate food that a lizard had fallen into.
Later the same month, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, 31 children were hospitalised with gastroenteritis after they consumed tainted food served at their school.
But despite how widespread this problem is becoming, parents in Masrak are not taking it lying down.
They’ve vowed to prevent the school from reopening and continue to protest at government failure. The shell-shocked community is demanding that the government provide their village with a new school, but their calls have fallen on dear ears so far.
Suresh Thakur, 35, is one of the few relieved parents in the village whose child avoided the toxic meal. His six-year-old son, Chandan Thakur, skipped school that day.
“I don’t know how to thank my stars,” he says. “I would often reprimand him for bunking school, but I am glad he played truant and came back home that day. I hate to think what would have happened to him if he had stayed for lunch as he normally does.’’
Asha Devi, another villager, feels lucky after her daughter Savita, survived. “She ate just a couple of mouthfuls, which is why I think she is alive today,’’ she says.
Despite the fact his son survived, Suresh, who works as a barber in the village, shares the grief of his neighbours.
“I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to carry the body of your child to a grave, I can’t even think about it,” he says. “It’s so painful what has happened here. I feel lucky death spared our house but so many families are hurting. They’ve experienced an awful tragedy.’’
And that pain is evident on all the parents’ faces, including Binod’s. “I’ll never be able to forget my children’s faces. Neither can my wife. I left all their toys, books and clothes in their grave. Seeing their things every day was too much for me,’’ he says, wiping away a tear.