Shyam Sood
Rajouri, January 19: A high-level inter-ministerial team reportedly headed by the Director Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Sunday reached Rajouri and held a meeting with the district administration.
The team was constituted on the direction of Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday after mysterious illness claimed 17 lives in Badhaal area of Koteranka subdivision in Rajouri district.
The inter-ministerial team was constituted to ascertain the causes of deaths that took place within 42 days in four families headed by Fazal Hussain (died) Mohd Rafiq, Mohd Yousuf (died) and Mohd Aslam.
The inter-ministerial team consists of experts from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers and Ministry of Water Resources. It will also be assisted by experts from animal husbandry, food safety and forensic science labs,
Experts from some of the most reputed institutions of the country have been arranged to manage the situation and understand the causative factors of deaths.
Families of Fazal Hussain, Mohd Yusuf and Mohd Aslam are linked while Mohd Rafiq is also a resident of the area.
Out of seventeen deaths 13 are minor children while four are adults. Except 6-years-old Nazia Akhter daughter of Mohd Rafiq all the remaining 16 died in the hospitals at Rajouri and Jammu.
Health department and other concerned departments have already probed the deaths, but the exact cause has not been found yet.
Even the Health & Higher Education Minister said that investigations and examination of samples indicated that the deaths were not due to a communicable disease of bacterial or viral origin and having no public health angle.
