After five members of a family died in a village in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, a food safety officer said it appears to be "case of poisoning", and may not be an outcome of “food poisoning” as suspected earlier. The official said no suspicious items or expired products were found during an examination of the food packets recovered from their home.
Food Safety Officer OP Singh said the team examined the packets of all the food items consumed by the family but did not find any expiry dates or anything suspicious.
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“We examined the packets of all the things they had eaten. No expiry date was found on any of them. We did not find anything suspicious,” Singh said.
He added that the absence of symptoms typically associated with food poisoning, such as vomiting and diarrhoea, had raised suspicions about the cause of the deaths.
“If it had been a case of food poisoning, there would have been symptoms like vomiting, diarrhoea, but nothing like that was found. The bodies were found in a normal state there. It seems to us that this is a case of poisoning,” he said.
What happened?
Five members of the family, including three children, died at their home in a village in Greater Noida after reportedly eating noodles for dinner on Friday night. Police had initially suspected food poisoning as a possible cause, although the exact circumstances surrounding the deaths remain unclear.
The deceased have been identified as Mahesh, 37, his wife Lalita, 35, and their three children — two sons aged 11 and three, and a seven-year-old daughter, police said.
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“According to local residents and the deceased couple’s mother, the family had eaten noodles on Friday night. However, the exact cause of death has not yet been established,” Noida police said in a statement.
Police received information about the incident on Saturday morning and rushed to the spot along with senior officials, an ambulance, a forensic team and officials from the food safety department.
The exact cause of death has yet to be established, and the suspected poisoning remains subject to further investigation.