Patna, July 18: Bihar Education Minister P K Shahi, who returned from Chhapra, yesterday alleged that a local RJD leader's shop supplied cooking oil mixed with poisonous organo phosphorus compound which led to the death of 22 kids who consumed vegetable cooked for the school mid day meal.
"The entire family of the local leader Arjun Rai, Dhruv Rai and others has fled Chhapra. Arjun Rai is the husband of the school principal Meena Kumari, where the tragedy took place", he alleged.
Though he did not name RJD, Shahi said, Arjun Rai and his cousin Dhruv Rai were prominent leaders of an opposition party in that area.
Narrating the sequence of events in the Chhapra school, the education minister said, "the cook had cooked the rice and pulses (dal). When she started cooking vegetable, she noticed that the cooking oil poured in the wok, suddenly emanated smoke which had a strong odour. She complained to the teacher, but the teacher said it was a new form of oil prepared at home, and ordered her to cook the vegetable and serve it to the kids."
"As soon as the children started eating the vegetables, they fell sick and began to lose consciousness. The cook herself tasted a portion of vegetables. She too fell sick, and had to be hospitalized, but she is now in a position to speak", Shahi said.
The minister said, the school principal Meena Kumari was transferred to the Dharmasati school under political pressure. The principal has been suspended, while the entire Rai family is absconding from Chhapra, he added.
Shahi said, Dhruv Rai is the driver-cum-bodyguard of an RJD MP, while his cousin Arjun Rai owned the grocery shop from where rice, oil and pulses were being supplied to the school, where Arjun's wife is the principal.
Shahi said, doctors at Patna Medical College Hospital also told him that a strange odour, that of organo phosphorus, was emanating from the bodies of school kids, from their vomit and even from their breath. It is now up to the police to investigate and I do not rule out a political conspiracy, he added.
"I was there in the hospital for 5 hours. All the people who went and saw the kids complained of the strange odour. It's clear that the kids were poisoned", said Shahi.
"Forensic experts will find out what sort of poison was there from the viscera of the kids who died", the JD(U) minister said.
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