Overview
- About 189 schoolchildren were taken to hospital after eating mid-day meals that made them sick on May 7, with pupils from Baluaha and a related school in Chandrayan later discharged after primary treatment.
- A forensic inspection referenced by the High Court recorded recovery of “small snakes” from food plates at the Baluaha school, a finding the court said must be probed further.
- The bench flagged material discrepancies in how food samples were collected and tested, and questioned a roughly seven-day delay before samples reached the Regional Forensic Science Laboratory in Bhagalpur.
- The court directed the Saharsa Superintendent of Police to personally supervise and head a special investigation team, formally added the supplying NGO as a respondent and asked the PM POSHAN directorate to file third-party assessment reports and consider suspending the agency pending investigation; the matter is next listed for hearing on June 2.
- The order raises wider oversight questions for Bihar’s PM POSHAN scheme because several districts use large, NGO-run centralised kitchens and past audits and the 2013 Mashrakh deaths have already exposed risks to meal safety and monitoring.