22 children died after eating poisoned free school meal in India

Cops are investigating how a lethal dose of insecticide got into the food at a school in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar

One official said the ingredients may not have been properly washed before the meal was cooked.

The children, between the ages of five and 12, fell ill on Tuesday soon after having lunch in 

Gandamal, 50 miles north of the state capital of Patna.

School authorities immediately stopped serving the meal of rice, lentils, soya beans and potatoes when the children began vomiting.

The lunch, part of a popular national campaign to give at least one daily hot meal to children from poor families, was cooked in the school kitchen.

One girl called Savita, 12, told how she got a stomach ache and was sick soon after eating.

“I don’t know what happened after that,” she said at Patna Medical College Hospital, where she and 24 other children are being treated for poisoning.

Three children are in a critical condition, officials said. The school cook was also reported to be seriously ill.

Medical superintendent RK Singh said: “We feel that some kind of insecticide was either accidentally or intentionally mixed in the food, but that will be clear through investigations.

“We prepared antidotes and treated the children for organic phosphorous poisoning.”

Authorities suspended an official in charge of the free meal scheme in the school and registered a case of criminal negligence against the school headmaster, who fled as soon as the children fell ill.

Angry villagers took the streets in protest, pelting a local police station with stones and setting cars and buses ablaze.

India’s Mid-Day Meal scheme is the world’s largest school feeding programme involving 120 million children across the country.