Police hunt principal over poison in lunches

Soon after they served the daily free lunch they had prepared for dozens of children at a rural Indian school, the two cooks realised something was very wrong. The students started fainting. Within hours, they began dying.

Twenty-three children between the ages of 5 and 12 have now died from eating food laced with insecticide and many others had fallen ill.

Authorities discovered a container of pesticide in the school’s cooking area next to the vegetable cooking oil and mustard oil, according to Amarjeet Sinha, a top official in the state of Bihar, where the tragedy took place.