Others have said their children survived after refusing to eat the food because of its foul odour. Children started falling ill within minutes of eating the meal, vomiting and complaining of stomach pains.
Video footage showed listless children being rushed to hospitals, their heads lolling from side to side and their limbs hanging limply. Distraught parents have told of carrying their children in their arms while driving their motorbikes to a hospital in the hope of saving them.
Free lunches are offered to some 120 million schoolchildren throughout India in what is the world’s largest school feeding programme. Bihar is one of the country’s poorest and most densely populated states.
Educators see the midday meal scheme as a way to increase school attendance, in a country where almost half of all young children are undernourished. But children often suffer from food poisoning due to poor hygiene in kitchens and occasionally sub standard food.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar promised a thorough investigation into the “sad tragedy”.
“The police have formed a special investigation team we will punish those who are guilty,” Kumar told a news conference in the state capital Patna.
The chief minister also denied opposition claims that medical delays led to a higher number of deaths.
“The response times were the quickest possible and the doctors tried their best to save lives,” he said.
The state government has announced plans to pay compensation of nearly $4,000 to families who lost their loved ones.
The tragedy has sparked concern about the midday meal programme, with reports from some schools of children dumping their meals in bins or refusing even to touch them.
Twenty children were hospitalised last Friday after they ate lunch at school in the state of Goa. They were released after treatment.
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