Meena Devi is arrested while travelling to court to hand herself in a week after tragedy left 23 children dead

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

Indian police have arrested the headteacher of the school where 23 children died after eating food contaminated with a pesticide last week.

Meena Devi disappeared from her home in Chhapra, 50 miles north of the state capital of Bihar, as the extent of the tragedy became clear. She was arrested while travelling to a local court to hand herself in on Wednesday.

"She is being interrogated by a team of police officials at a secluded place," Bihar's director general of police, Abhayanand, told the media.

The victims of the poisoning, aged between five and 12, fell ill within minutes of eating a meal of rice and curried vegetables in their one-room school on 16 July. Some died almost immediately, others on the floor of a hospital where they went for treatment.

Forensic tests showed the meal was contaminated with monocrotophos, a lethal pesticide banned in many countries.

The Indian midday meals programme is one of the biggest such schemes anywhere in the world, covering more than 120 million children. The scheme is run in about 72,000 primary schools across Bihar, one of the poorest states in India.

Prices of meat, fruit or fresh vegetables have soared in recent years, leaving parents in poorer families reliant on school lunches to ensure adequate levels of nutrition. However, the scheme is plagued by waste and corruption. Incidents of poisoning are common, though rarely this serious.

Representatives of around 300,000 primary school teachers in the state have refused to oversee the distribution of midday meals.

"Teachers must be involved only in teaching," Brajnandan Sharma, president of the Bihar Primary School Teachers Association, told the Guardian.

But Prashant Kumar Shahi, Bihar's education minister, said there were no resources available to outsource the supervision of the meals programme.

School meals in India are usually provided by contractors. Many use substandard ingredients and pay officials to turn a blind eye. Grain purchased by the government for distribution is often poorly stored.

The Bihar state government has previously ordered teachers to taste all school meals themselves.

Nitish Kumar, Bihar's chief minister, said development funds would be channelled to the village where the tragedy took place.

"Although we cannot get back the lives lost, the village will have metaled road, a high school, a health centre, water facility and all that," Kumar told reporters.

According to the World Bank, 43% of Indian children are underweight – the highest level in the world and a figure that has remained constant for at least 20 years. In China the figure is only 7%; in sub-Saharan Africa it averages 28%. Poor nutrition among lactating and pregnant mothers means the effects of post-natal malnutrition for children are exacerbated.

The government, led by the Congress party, is pushing for a massive £14bn expansion of the country's food subsidy programme. Congress, which controls only half of India's 28 states, won the last two general elections after introducing populist policies such as a rural jobs scheme and a £8.3bn waiver programme for farmers' loans.