Several students of the government skipped mid-day meal following the announcement from the cleric.

AGRA: An Aligarh-based Muslim cleric, who had announced on Friday that Muslim students should not “eat” anything, given in the government schools had to eat his own words following widespread criticism.

The cleric, Maulana Humaid, made the announcement during the Friday prayers from the mosque after some students of a government school fell ill after consuming “deworming” tablets given to them. The incident had happened at Nagla Narayan Singh primary school.

Though no official complaint was lodged, the cleric faced lot of criticism from parents and other members of the community, forcing him to apologize. The cleric told media persons on Sunday that his statement had been misunderstood.

The cleric’s announcement, which incidentally, came just a day after the death of a 12-year-old girl, Chandani Shaikh in Mumbai after consuming iron and folic acid tablet on August 6 during the national immunisation programme, had sparked a scare in the Muslim- dominated areas. As a result, only 81 of the 171 students came to school on Saturday and of these only 20 had their “mid-day” meals.

Headmaster of the school. Urmesh Chauhan said, “on Saturday, the cook told me that students were not ready to eat anything and when I asked him the reason, I was shocked to know that about the cleric’s announcement from the mosque.

She added that she immediately informed the village Pradhan, Devendra Singh about it. Singh contacted the police after he failed to get in touch with the cleric.

Later, the cleric himself contacted the village Pradhan and apologised for the announcement. Singh said, “We have not given any police complaint as we don’t want to aggravate this matter”. He said that 35% Muslims and 65 percent Hindus are living in this village and there was no point of precipitating the matter.

Harduaganj SHO, Vinod Singh confirmed the incident and said that it has been resolved.

