Thursday, July 25, 2013

News : Absconding Principal Meena Devi Arrested, Bihar Mid-day meal tragedy

Eight days after the mid-day meal tragedy which claimed the lives of 23 children, police today arrested the absconding school principal and has begun interrogating her.

"We arrested her from Chhapra town," Saran district superintendent of police and head of the special investigation team Sujeet Kumar said.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar confirmed the arrest of the principal, Meena Devi.

"The investigation is on. The principal of the school is in police custody. We will probe the incident from all possible angles," Kumar told reporters in Patna.

State Police chief Abhyanand who was present at the CM's press meet said the absconding principal of Dharmasati Gandaman primary school in Chhapra in Saran district has been arrested and she did not surrender.

He, however, refused to disclose the location from where she was arrested and other details saying these were matters of investigation.

Meena Devi was held even as a notice declaring her as a proclaimed offender was pasted at her Chhapra home.

The notice asked Meena Devi to present herself before the police immediately failing which the process of attachment of her property will start, the SP told PTI.

Earlier in the day, she had filed an anticipatory bail application in the court of CJM Chhapra which did not provide her any instant relief.

An FIR had been lodged against Meena Devi with Mashrakh police station in the mid-day meal case and she had been absconding since the incident on July 17 along with her husband, said to the supplier of the food material used on that day.

Read Full Story @ DNA India

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- Unknown Updated at: Thursday, July 25, 2013

Friday, July 19, 2013

News : Bihar Meal Tragedy, The Headmistress forced the cook

Headmistress of an Indian school where 23 pupils died after eating a free lunch contaminated with pesticides forced a cook to ignore complaints and serve the suspect food, police have claimed.

Shortly after her instruction, the cook collapsed and, 90 minutes later, the first victim, Anshu Kumar, aged four-and-a-half, died on his way to hospital. Investigators believe that the mustard oil used in cooking the meal had been contaminated with poisonous organophosphate pesticides.

The scale of the tragedy provoked violent protests from parents and relations in Chappra, Bihar, one of India's poorest states, and anger throughout the country. Several parents buried the bodies of their children in front of the school in protest on Thursday.

"We decided to bury our children in front of the school building to remind the government that they died because of their negligence," said Madav Ram, whose 12-year-old son Rahul was among the victims.

"We also plan to raise a memorial in the memory of the dead children inside the school." The Midday Meal Scheme is the world's largest and serves free lunches to 120 million pupils throughout India. Many parents send their children to school primarily for the free meal, but there have been widespread complaints of substandard and rotten food.

Abhishek Sinha, a district magistrate, told The Daily Telegraph that he believed many of the children who ate the meal at Dharmashati-Gandaman primary school on Tuesday may have been saved had the headmistress, who is now on the run, tasted the food before it was served, as required under the scheme's rules.

He said an adult would have survived the tasting but the children, aged four to 10, were more vulnerable because of their low body weight. The head, identified as Meena Devi, had been in charge of buying the food for the scheme with government funds. Sujeet Kumar, a police superintendent, said the school's cook, Manju Devi, had warned the headmistress that the oil may have been contaminated after it began emitting a foul smell during cooking. "The headmistress said, 'Continue cooking and serve the food to the children'. There is certainly negligence on the part of the headmistress, whether criminal by design or carelessness, which is under investigation," he said. Several children approached the cook after she had served them to say it had a strange taste...