CHENNAI: A day after two children died due to inhaling rodenticide at their apartment in Kundrathur, police inquiries have revealed that employees of a pest control company based in T Nagar had placed nearly four times the prescribed quantity of the rodenticide inside the house. Two men have been arrested in the case.
Furthermore, the form of rodenticide they used was exclusively for outdoor use. “While only two or three pieces of the rodenticide should have been ideally placed along the windows or other areas outside the house, the employees placed around 12 pieces inside the apartment,” a police source said.
Police identified the arrested men as S Dinakaran (43) of Ashok Nagar and K Shankar Das (36) of Thandalam. They were later remanded to judicial custody.
Meanwhile, a press release from the Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre said the parents of the deceased children, Giridharan (34) and Pavithra (31), are vitally stable and out of critical state. However, they need to be monitored in the ICU for another two days, the release read. The police said the family had contacted the pest control company to curb rat infestation in their house.
On Wednesday evening, representatives from the company placed the chemicals, in powder form and some as tablets, all over the house. Later in the night, the couple and their children G Vaishnavi (6) and G Sai Sudharshan (1) slept in the bedroom and inhaled the poisonous rodenticide. The children died the following day.