Overview
- In Ghurkot village, four children who ate cut watermelon on Sunday evening during a family visit fell violently ill, and 15-year-old Akhilesh Dhivar died hours later as three others were admitted to the district hospital.
- Doctors said the children began vomiting and suffered diarrhoea and breathing trouble within hours of eating the fruit.
- District officials opened a probe, preserved the boy’s viscera, and sent watermelon samples to forensic and food-safety laboratories for testing.
- Clinicians suspect food poisoning from contamination because the watermelon was sliced in the morning and eaten after several hours, but the cause remains unconfirmed until test results arrive.
- The case has drawn extra scrutiny after Mumbai tests found zinc phosphide, a rat poison, in a separate family’s deaths, and officials warn against assuming a link before the Chhattisgarh reports are in.