Following an outbreak of encephalitis in Muzaffarpur district which has claimed lives of 124 children, Bihar Agriculture Minister Prem Kumar on Friday said that a conspiracy was hatched to defame litchis produced in the state. Speaking to news agency ANI, Prem Kumar said terming the fruit as the cause of encephalitis deaths in Muzaffarpur is a "conspiracy to defame the fruit".

While the exact cause of the deaths has not been determined yet, experts believe that the outbreak of encephalitis could be due to the toxins present in litchis.

The Bihar minister also said that the state government has constituted a team of agriculture scientists and horticulture experts to probe whether litchis are responsible for the death due to encephalitis in Muzaffarpur.

Prem Kumar said, "People have been consuming litchi since long. These litchis are exported worldwide and there have been no complaints from anywhere. I think there is some conspiracy going on to defame litchi." The minister added that he has instructed the concerned department to investigate the matter.

"We have constituted a team of agriculture scientists and horticulture experts to probe whether litchis are responsible for the death due to encephalitis or not in Muzaffarpur," Prem Kumar said.

Prem Kumar: People have been consuming litchi since long. These litchis are exported worldwide and there has been no complains from anywhere. I think there is some conspiracy going on to defame litchi. I have instructed the concerned department to investigate. https://t.co/44qX7ncS59 ANI (@ANI) June 21, 2019





Earlier in the day, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Saran said that it was amusing to believe that the sole cause of the encephalitis deaths is litchis. He also said that all the exports have been stopped.

"Today more than 30 hectares of litchis are produced in Bihar. All exports have been stopped. My concern is, is it actually litchis or something else. Don't kill this industry, let's be more pragmatic and find the reason behind the children's death," the BJP MP said.

He said, "We all were born and brought up in Bihar and we had litchis right from childhood. There has been an incident in Bihar which is almost an epidemic. Around 124 lives have been lost. Nonetheless, it is very amusing to believe that litchi is the cause."

Bihar Health Minister Mangal Pandey had earlier said that a team formed to ascertain the cause of this disease concluded that sleeping empty stomach at night, dehydration due to humidity and eating litchi on empty stomach were some of the causes of encephalitis.

The AES is a viral disease that causes flu-like symptoms such as high fever, vomiting and in extreme cases, brain dysfunction, seizure and inflammation of heart and kidney.