Indian children killed by tainted lunch are buried next to school

NEW DELHI — While authorities Thursday combed Indian villages for the principal of a school where nearly two dozen children died after eating food laced with insecticide, grief-stricken parents buried their children next to the school — a poignant gesture of protest over a tragedy that has shaken the country.

Principal Meena Devi and her husband fled as children began fainting after eating the school’s daily midday meal of rice, potatoes, soybeans and lentils in the eastern state of Bihar. Authorities say 23 children between the ages of 5 and 12 died from eating the lunch, and at least 24 remain hospitalized with severe food poisoning.

The incident has raised doubts among many Indians about the safety of food served in such lunches, part of an long-standing government-funded program to provide meals to 120 million poor schoolchildren across the country. Children in many schools across Bihar on Thursday refused to eat lunches served as part of the program, authorities said.

Indian media quoted Bihar officials as saying inspections of food served during the midday meal at the school, in Bihar’s Saran district, were not being carried out, though they did not say for how long. Federal officials said that the Bihar administration had been told in April that they were receiving complaints from both students and parents about the quality of food served at Bihar schools, CNN-IBN news channel reported.

Parents and relatives of the dead children expressed their anger over by burying them just outside the school grounds in a somber display of protest.

“This school will not run — we will not allow it,” Indian media quoted Rakeshwar Mahato, grandfather of one of the children, as saying. “This is where our children were murdered.”

Autopsies conducted Thursday confirmed that the children had died from ingesting insecticide, though investigators were still trying to determine how the chemicals got into the food. Officials said the insecticide may have been in the food or the cooking oil used to prepare the meals Tuesday.

The lunch program, known as the Midday Meals Scheme, is one of the world’s largest school nutrition efforts. It began in the 1980s in western India and was replicated throughout the country in 1995 with the goal of fighting malnutrition that afflicts nearly half of India’s children.

Special correspondent Tanvi Sharma reported from New Delhi, and staff writer Alex Rodriguez reported from Islamabad.

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