DHARMAPURI: Twelve students were hospitalised and are being treated for poisoning after eating sesame seed sweets distributed by a classmate. The class XII student had unwittingly brought the sweets laced with poison to kill rats.
The student brought a dozen of sesame seed sweets to share it with his classmates at the Begarahalli Government Higher Secondary School, and 12 students who consumed it were rushed to the Dharmapuri Medical College Hospital after falling ill.
The boy's mother had laced the sweets with rat poison to get rid of the rodents -- a fact he was unaware about.
Sources said that soon after the students ate the sweets, they began vomiting, had nausea, and diarrhoea, while some fell unconscious. The teachers immediately rushed all of them to a Public Health Centre where the doctor diagnosed that they had consumed some sort of poison. They were then taken to Dharmapuri Medical College.
Sources in the Education Department told TNIE that they are probing into the matter. They said all the students are now stable. However, Dean of the Dharmapuri Medical College Hospital Srinivasraj said that one student has been shifted to a private hospital while all others would be kept under observation for the next three days.