{"id":851828,"date":"2025-05-28T22:11:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T03:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/28\/did-a-dead-snake-in-a-school-lunch-poison-dozens-of-children-authorities-in-india-investigate\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T22:11:57","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T03:11:57","slug":"did-a-dead-snake-in-a-school-lunch-poison-dozens-of-children-authorities-in-india-investigate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/28\/did-a-dead-snake-in-a-school-lunch-poison-dozens-of-children-authorities-in-india-investigate\/","title":{"rendered":"Did a dead snake in a school lunch poison dozens of children? Authorities in India investigate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Authorities in India<\/a> are investigating reports that a dead snake in a public school lunch caused dozens of children to fall ill. <\/p>\n

More than 100 students became sick in the northeastern town of Mokama last week, the country\u2019s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said in a statement<\/a> Thursday.<\/p>\n

A school cook reportedly served the food to about 500 children after removing a dead snake from it, the commission said, citing reports from local media.<\/p>\n

The NHRC has demanded that local police provide a \u201cdetailed\u201d report of the incident within two weeks, which is expected to include the health status of the affected children, the statement added. <\/p>\n

If the reports are true, the case would be a serious “violation of the human rights of the students,\u201d the commission said, adding that villagers, angered by the reports, had blocked a road in protest. <\/p>\n

While India has achieved food sufficiency in grain production and steady economic growth, it still accounts for a quarter of the world\u2019s hungry people and is home to over 190 million undernourished people, according to the United Nation<\/a>s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a bid to combat hunger, India rolled out a cooked Mid Day Meal Scheme in 2001 that provided a free lunch for children in public schools for at least 200 days a year, according to the country\u2019s Ministry of Education<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The school food program is the world\u2019s largest, covering over 113 million children ages 6 to 10, according to some estimates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Food safety complaints related to school meals are not uncommon in India. In 2013, at least 23 children were killed<\/a> by a free school lunch contaminated with concentrated pesticide. The students fell ill within minutes <\/a>of eating rice and potato curry, vomiting and convulsing with stomach cramps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n

Peter Guo<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Guo is\u00a0a fellow on NBC\u2019s Asia Desk, based in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authorities in India are investigating reports that a dead snake in a public school lunch caused dozens of children to fall ill. More than 100 students became sick in the northeastern town of Mokama last week, the country\u2019s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said in a statement Thursday. A school cook reportedly served the food<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":851829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[868,40960],"tags":[6490,9692],"class_list":["post-851828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-school","category-snake","tag-school","tag-snake"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}