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1,000 Affected in Northeast India Food Poisoning Case
More than 1,000 people, mostly children, were taken ill after allegedly consuming poisonous gram in northeast India's Assam state last week, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported on Sunday.
The victims, participants of a march organized by the government in Assam's Barpeta district on August 9 on the occasion of "Peace and Development Week," complained of vomiting and fever after being served with "sprouted gram," the PTI said.
A 13-year-old girl identified Krishna Das had died in a make- shift medical camp on Saturday night, it added.
More than 700 people were currently being treated at Barpeta civil hospital, while another local hospital was treating more than 200 victims, among whom the condition of 112 was stated to be critical, the PTI quoted doctors as saying.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had ordered special medical teams to be sent to the affected villages to treat the victims, while make-shift medical camps had been set up to take care of patients who didn't get into the hospitals.
The Barpeta district administration had arrested two shopkeepers who had reportedly sold the gram for being distributed to the school students in the peace march. However, the exact cause of the tragedy was yet to be ascertained, said the PTI.
It quoted sources as saying that the gram was mixed with pesticide and was meant to be strewn on the paddy fields as a guard against insects.
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