Police in India’s eastern Bihar province announced the arrest today, eight days after the July 16 poisoning. The children were eating the meals as part of a government sponsored free lunch program, which provides free meals to more than 120 million children across the country. The program was started to encourage families, particularly those living in the country’s wide swaths of poverty in rural areas, to send their children to school.
Immediately after eating the lunches, which consisted of rice, beans and potato curry, dozens of children fell violently ill with symptoms including diarrhea and vomiting. Within hours, 23 were dead and dozens more had been rushed to a hospital. Autopsy reports showed insecticide had been placed inside food. All of the dead children were between the ages of 5 and 12.
Shortly after the incident, the school’s principal, Meena Kumari, went into hiding. One of the school’s cooks, who was also rushed to hospital after eating the contaminated meal, told reporters she had warned Kumari the food may have become contaminated, but that Kumari ordered her to continue cooking it anyway.
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