Bihar education minister P.K. Sahi, under fire for the death of 23 schoolchildren soon after they ate a contaminated midday meal, on Thursday refused to resign even as calls for his dismissal grew and autopsy reports confirmed the presence of an insecticide in the children’s meals.
Public anger at the loss of so many young lives in the care of a government school was reflected in an attack on Bihar social welfare minister Parveen Amanullah while she was travelling from Patna to Muzaffarpur on Thursday. Ms Amanullah’s car was pelted with stones and held up for about half an hour near Hajipur by a mob protesting the children’s deaths at a primary school in Chapra district on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Asserting that there was “no systemic failure causing the incident”, Mr Sahi said it was wrong to blame the Nitish-Kumar-led JD(U) state government for the deaths. Mr Sahi, who had lost a Lok Sabha bypoll in the area by a huge margin last month, had drawn flak on Wednesday for suggesting before a probe that the mid-day meal disaster was a conspiracy by an Opposition party.
No arrests were made for the lapses causing the deaths at the school at Dharmasati-Gandavan village. The school’s headmistress, Ms Meena Kumari, whose negligence is widely suspected for the deaths though she also lost a son, has been absconding since Tuesday. Chapra SP Sujit Kumar said raids were conducted for her arrest and that cans of insecticides were found by police at her house during a raid. She was placed under suspension and an FIR was lodged against her after the tragedy.
Although the State Forensic Science Laboratory is yet to submit its chemical analysis report, Patna Medical College and Hospital superintendent Dr Amarkant Jha Amar cited autopsy reports of the dead children and said the presence of insecticides was confirmed “either in the food or the cooking oil used”.