At least 37 students have fallen ill after drinking water from a school tubewell and have been rescued and admitted to hospital. The incident took place at Mamudnagar High School in the Nagarpur upazila of Tangail on Tuesday.
A white, paste-like substance wrapped in polythene was recovered from beside the school. It is suspected that, on Tuesday morning, someone poured liquid agricultural pesticide into the school tubewell, and that the students fell ill soon after drinking the water without knowing.
According to the Nagarpur Upazila Health Complex, 37 students affected by the poisoning came to the complex, of whom 29 were admitted. Two who were seriously ill were sent to Tangail Medical College Hospital, while six were given primary treatment and sent home.
The acting head teacher of Mamudnagar High School, Mostafizur Rahman, said the students had drunk the tubewell water on Tuesday morning and fallen ill one after another, after which they were taken to hospital.
A student under treatment, Marufa Akter, said a few of them had drunk water from the tubewell beside the school after eating jhalmuri, then vomited and fell ill, and the teachers, sensing the situation, had had them admitted to the upazila health complex. She said not everyone had eaten jhalmuri, and that some had fallen ill after drinking water because of the heat.
The chairman of the Mamudnagar union parishad, Sheikh Joj Kamal, said someone had applied pesticide or a poison to the school tubewell water, which was why the students had fallen ill one after another after drinking it. It needed to be investigated whether this was an act of sabotage, and those responsible identified, he said.
The Nagarpur upazila secondary education officer, Nadir Ahmed, said anger and panic prevailed across the area. A white, paste-like substance wrapped in polythene had been recovered from beside the tubewell, and the poisoning was suspected to have been caused by mixing this paste into the tubewell water, he said.
The upazila health and family planning officer, Dr Abdul Kadir, said 37 students affected by poisoning had come to the hospital, of whom 29 were admitted, two seriously ill students were sent to Tangail Medical College Hospital, and six were given primary treatment. The officer-in-charge of Nagarpur police station, Zahurul Islam, said the scene had been visited as soon as the news was received and the matter was being thoroughly examined, and that the hospitalised students had now largely recovered.
The upazila nirbahi officer, Erfan Uddin, said the tubewell water had been sent to a laboratory for testing to confirm whether anything had been mixed into it, and that the necessary steps would be taken after the report was received.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report