Central team spends six hours in remote Rajouri village hit by mysterious deaths

Rajouri/Jammu, Jan 20 (PTI) A high-level inter-ministerial team on Monday conducted an investigation for nearly six hours in the Badhaal village of Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district to ascertain the causes of deaths of 17 members of three families under mysterious circumstances, officials said.

The village also witnessed the burial of a 15-year-old girl who died in a Jammu hospital on January 19 and a subdued wedding of one inhabitant during the day amid massive activities surrounding the 16-member central team’s visit.

The central team, headed by a director-rank officer in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and including several experts, reached Rajouri district headquarters on Sunday.

The team members received a briefing from senior district, health and police officers before heading to the village early on Monday.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah ordered the constitution of the inter-ministerial team to ascertain the causes of the deaths in the three families related to each other in the remote village, about 55 kilometres from Rajouri town, between December 7 and January 19.

The officials said the team, accompanied by dozens of senior officers of various departments, reached Badhaal around 11.30 am and visited the bereaved families, even as gravediggers were preparing the last resting place of Yasmeen Kousar (15) — the sixth child of Md Aslam who breathed her last at the SMGS Hospital in Jammu on January 19.

The central team divided itself in two groups and undertook an investigation, including collecting samples, they said.

National Conference leader and local MLA Javid Iqbal Choudhary said the team’s visit was meant to carry forward the ongoing investigation to ascertain the cause of the deaths.

“Earlier, health teams from the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research), AIIMS (Delhi), PGI (Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh) and others from premier institutions visited the village along with a full-fledged laboratory. They were all experts in the field and the visit of this inter-ministerial team is to carry forward that investigation,” he said.

The officials said Kousar’s body reached the village late in the afternoon and was buried in the new graveyard set up adjacent to her five siblings and grandparents who died over the past week. Nine members of two families died in the village between December 7 and 12.

Additional District Magistrate (Kotranka) Dil Mir carried out the proceedings of sealing Aslam’s single-storey thatched-roof home shortly after the experts accompanying the team collected samples from there.

“This is the house where eight of the deceased persons were living in and the seizure is routine work. The house, along with the house of another victim, Fazal Hussain, were sealed earlier and reopened to facilitate the experts to collect samples,” Mir told PTI.

He said the government had already banned holding any feast, whether related to weddings or religious ceremonies of the dead, for the time being, similar to the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the investigation to ascertain the causes of the deaths was yet to be completed.

“The people are fully cooperating as they understand the gravity of the situation,” the officer said.

While the village is in grief, one resident — Ikhlaq Shah — tied the knot in a simple function that saw the groom accompanied by four of his close relatives and friends visiting the home of the bride in the nearby Draj village and performing ‘nikah’.

“We cancelled the marriage function due to the grief in the village but performed the nikah ceremony, according to the already-announced schedule,” Shah’s relative Md Hafeez said.

He said they had sought permission from the executive magistrate concerned and added that no one was invited to the function.

According to the officials, the central team, in collaboration with the local administration, would work on providing immediate relief as well as taking precautionary measures to prevent such incidents in the future.

Experts from some of the most reputable institutions in the country have been arranged to manage the situation and understand the causes of the deaths.

The patients complained of fever, pain, nausea, intense sweating and loss of consciousness before dying within days of their admission to hospitals.

Earlier, a Jammu and Kashmir government spokesperson had said that investigation and samples empirically indicated that the incidents were not due to a communicable disease of bacterial or viral origin and that there was no public health angle.

The police have also set up a special investigation team after certain neurotoxins were found in the samples of the dead.

Authorities recently sealed a spring in the village after its water tested positive for some pesticides or insecticides.

The additional deputy commissioner ordered the sealing of the spring, along with deployment of two to three security personnel round-the-clock, at the water resource in the village.

“It is a precautionary measure… We are already providing them (villagers) fresh water through tankers,” he said.