Poisonous substance claims girl's life, 7 other children fall ill

Bathinda : Lakshmi, a 10-year-old girl, died while seven children fell ill after consuming some poisonous substance at Kheta Singh Basti late this evening.Mystery shrouds the incident as the parents whose children fell ill were reluctant to speak out about the possible cause for the incident. It came as a shock to the workers of an NGO, Noujwan Welfare Society, which first received an information about the incident. They rushed to the locality but found people unwilling to speak. The NGO volunteers started visiting hutments to look for sick children. In one such hutment, they found a girl wrapped in a blanket and dumped under a hoarding. They rushed her to the Civil Hospital, where doctors declared her brought dead. Smelling a rat, the volunteers launched a search operation and found seven more children complaining of ill health.

When this correspondent inquired from the parents of the children who fell ill, initially they refused to divulge details, but later they claimed that children had consumed some fruits (guava and kinnow), suspected to have a severe dose of pesticide spray that led to the incident. Umesh Kumar, whose daughter died and son, Santosh, was under medical observation, said, “Both were vomiting and complaining of some problem in the stomach. I got them examined from a medical practitioner in the locality, who said it was not serious.” When questioned, the doctors at the Civil Hospital said the condition of some of the children was critical.