Labourers death: Meghalaya apprises Assam of prelim findings

Meghalaya government has intimated the Assam government on the preliminary findings over the death of 14 labourers in a remote village in East Jaintia Hills district last week where they allegedly died of consuming poisonous fruits, officials said today.
Chief Secretary P Barkos Warjri has assured all assistance and cooperation to his Assam counterpart Jitesh Khosla in connection with the case even as a police inquiry headed by IGP A Sun is yet to submit its report, they said.
"The chief secretary has provided all inputs available based on preliminary findings detailing the incident, feedbacks and steps taken by the state government to inquire into the incident yesterday," a top home department official told PTI.

Besides an IG level inquiry ordered into the incident, the state police is awaiting report on the viscera samples taken from the victims to ascertain the cause of death presumably due to food poisoning after consuming the poisonous fruit, the official said.
The official also said that Warjri has assured necessary assistance from his government to Assam Additional Chief Secretary Syam Lal Mewara who is also conducting a parallel inquiry into the circumstances that led to the death of the labourers.
On April 6, at around 8:30 am, the labourers were reported to have found been dead at their makeshift camp in a remote village in Saipung area and preliminary investigation revealed they had consumed a highly poisonous fruit grounded together as 'chutney', Superintendent of Police M K Dkhar said.

The bark of the tree is also used by the locals for partial poisoning of fishes in the river.
According to the police, it is suspected that the labourers had no knowledge about the poisonous content of the fruit and might have consumed the same on April 5 evening for dinner.
The left-over 'chutney' along with the left over fruits have been seized for forensic analysis.