Protests follow school meal deaths

17 July 2013 Last updated at 07:56 ET

Children being carried from an ambulance

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Emily Buchanan reports: ''Local grief has turned to fury outside the hospital''

There have been violent protests in the Indian state of Bihar after 22 children died and dozens more fell sick after eating a tainted free school meal.

Four police vehicles were set on fire in Dharmasati Gandaman in Saran district during the protests by parents and hundreds of villagers.

A doctor at the local hospital said a chemical used in pesticides is likely to be the cause of the contamination.

The Mid-Day Meal Scheme provides free food, but often suffers poor hygiene.

It was introduced to combat hunger and boost school attendance, and reaches 120 million children in 1.2 million schools across the country, according to the government.

But 28 sick primary school children were taken to hospitals in the nearby town of Chhapra and the state capital, Patna, after consuming a meal of rice, soybeans and potatoes on Tuesday.

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In a country where nearly half of the children are undernourished and struggle to go to school, the school meal programme is a weapon to tackle hunger and illiteracy.

Economists believe the programme bolsters primary school enrolment and attendance, eliminates hunger, enables children from diverse class and caste backgrounds to share a meal together and bury social prejudices, and provides children with hygiene and nutritional education.

There is enough evidence to prove, they say, that the programme, by and large, has been a success.

That's precisely why the deaths of more than 20 school children after consuming contaminated free meals in Bihar state is shocking.

BBC correspondent Amarnath Tewary said local people armed with poles and sticks had blocked streets and locked railway gates, halting the movement of trains.

As well as the protests in Dharmasati Gandaman - where the school is located - our correspondent said a crowd set fire to a bus and damaged private property in Chhapra.

Political parties have called for a protest strike.

But, our correspondent said, political leaders have been chased from the streets by enraged protesters.

In total, 47 students of a primary school in Dharmasati Gandaman village fell sick after eating the free lunch.

K M Dubey, who is a doctor at the Chhapra district hospital, said: "When the children were clinically examined, we saw that there was severe congestion in the chest, and their pupils were dilated. These are symptoms of organophosphorous poisoning.

"Organophosphorous is a compound also used as a pesticide for crops. It is very dangerous. Even a small quantity of it would prove fatal for small children. Looking at the critical condition in which they were brought to the hospital, it seems like there were large quantities of poison in the food that they consumed."

An inquiry has begun to find the cause of the poisoning and 200,000 rupees ($3,370) in compensation offered to the families of each of the dead.

There are fears the number of dead could rise as some of the children, all below the age of 12, are critically ill.

The father of one sick child, Raja Yadav, said his son had been vomiting after returning from school and had to be rushed to hospital.

Patna-based journalist Amarnath Tewary says villagers told local reporters that similar cases of food poisoning from Mid-Day Meals had happened in the area previously.

The state education minister, PK Shahi, told the BBC "that food is not being checked before it is being served".

He added that "the scale at which the operation is being carried out, serving food to 20 million children every day and that too in remotest village schools, checking food before it is served - that itself is a challenge".

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar called an emergency meeting and ordered a team of forensic experts to the school.

Bihar is one of India's poorest and most populous states.

The Mid-Day Meal was first introduced for poor and disadvantaged children in the southern city of Chennai in 1925.

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