Bihar is not quite the same since 25 poor school children perished eating their mid-day meal at the Gandaman primary school in Chhapra district last month. Since then, there have been a spate of poisoning incidents, of all places, in hand pumps installed at various schools throughout the state. By the sheerest of coincidences, rumours of contaminated water in hand pumps started pouring into the capital since the Chhapra mid-day meal deaths and the state administration has good reasons to be worried. According to the police, more than a dozen schools have been targeted by anti-social elements in which 100 or so children have taken ill after drinking water from hand pumps installed in their schools.
Consider this:
• 54 students take ill after drinking water in Mohammedpur village school in Patna district
• A little earlier, 63 students faced similar problems at a school in Sitamarhi district
• Three students fell ill after they drank hand pump water from their school under the Garakha block of Saran district
• Three others students faced similar issues in Aurungabad district
Scarily for the Nitish Kumar government, cases of this type have been on the rise. A usually calm chief minister has appealed to the people to be vigilant and careful. He told journalists recently that village chowkidars have been asked to monitor the working of hand pumps. But that is easier said than done. The state has 9,000 chowkidars or village guards and there are 7.78 lakh hand pumps to look after. The seriousness of the situation can be gauged from the fact the state government has now ordered the recruitment of dafadars or police informers to pitch in.
Patna district magistrate Shrawan Kumar is as mystified as the rest. ‘‘This is a matter of intensive scientific inquiry. No one knows how it is happening.’’ But preliminary investigations by scientists have reported the presence of pesticides mixed in water in at least two cases reported so far. Thus far, no arrests have been made.
Says JD (U)’s Arun Kumar Singh: ‘‘Prima facie, it appears as if some criminal elements have tried to contaminate the underground water system. This is a well planned move. Everything cannot be viewed politically.”
So is this ‘chemical warfare’ the handiwork of political elements wanting to destabilize the Nitish Kumar regime? Or is a case of excessive use of fertilizers, chemicals and other toxic substances contaminating underground water flowing out of hand pumps?
In a state recognized as the fastest growing under the JD (U) dispensation with a much-improved law and order situation, investigators are baffled in their attempts to get at the root of the problem.
Such has been the power of swirling rumours that people have stopped using hand pumps, the most common source of water in the state. Altogether 14 districts are under the grip of this hand pump fever. On August 3, more than 63 children took ill after drinking water from the school hand pump. They were rushed to the SKMCH hospital in Muzaffarpur where attending doctors declared that they had consumed poisonous water. On the same day, students and even a school principle reported similar problems in the Maoist-infested Arwal, Sheikhpura and Jehanabad districts.
This has come at the heels of another tragedy which was narrowly averted on August 1 when 180 students became unwell after eating their mid-day meal in Arwal and Jamui districts.
The state government is naturally worried. Nitish Kumar has directed DGP, Abhayanand to get the root of the problem and the cases have been referred to the Bihar Police’s CID special branch. Additional Director General of CID, AK Upadhyay, has travelled to 14 districts from where cases of poisoning have been reported and 35 FIRs have been registered.
Says a senior police officer: ‘‘we shall reach a conclusion very soon. Samples of affected hand pumps and related information is being collected. We have identified some persons and their cell phones have been put under surveillance.” Patna is agog with news that some arrests have been made, but so far no names have been revealed.
Since the Chhapra incident, there has been a psychological fear of poisoning and contamination. These days, teachers first check the mid-day meal before giving it to students. Just how palpable is the fear became evident at a Samastipur school recently when a drunk entered its premises and announced loudly that the mid-day meal was contaminated. It was enough to bring down the police and key administration officials – later it turned out to be a false alarm.
The public health and engineering department (PHED) has sealed 67 hand pumps in nine districts from where complaints of contaminated water have been lodged. Samples of those pumps too have been collected for scientific analysis.
Meanwhile, the state’s CID has its eyes and ears open. Officers have been asked to keep a watch on the activities of some suspect local leaders and this includes a scrutiny of their mobile call details. A man detained in Madhubani was found pouring chemical substances in a school hand pump. Vigilance, after all, is a price you have to pay for keeping democracy in fine fettle – and school children healthy.
