(Diya TV) — In India and Pakistan, laddus, a ball-shaped pastry made of flour, minced dough and sugar, are reserved for special festive occasions, like holidays, weddings and the birth of a new child. On a Wednesday of mid-April, Umar Hayat and his family celebrated the birth of his new grandson in his village in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
He invited many relatives for the gathering to his hut in Karor Lal Esan, and sent his son to purchase about 11 pounds of laddus, according to the newspaper Dawn. Enough to serve everyone, especially the children.
As they began eating the laddus, they starting vomiting, one after the other. Soon, several of the attendees were rushed to the hospital, Dawn reported, where they became even more ill. Soon after, many of them began dying, one by one. By the next day, 12 members of Hayat’s family were dead, among them eight of his sons, a daughter and three grandchildren.
Simultaneously, several others who had purchased sweets from the same Tariq Hotel and Sweet Shop also fell horribly ill and were rushed to the hospital as well. By the following week, 19 more who had consumed the laddus or other products had been pronounced dead.
Rameez Bukhari, a senior police officer from the local district, suggested that a worker at the shop “inadvertently” added pesticide to the laddus mix. “There was a pesticide shop close by which was being renovated, and the owner had left his pesticides at the bakery for safe keeping,” Bukhari was quoted as saying by Gulf News.
“A baker may have used a small packet in the sweet mixture,” he said, but added that police were awaiting the results of laboratory testing.
The Chief Minister of Punjab made a visit to the village, assuring residents that a thorough investigation would take place. Local health officials have shut down the shop and sent samples to a laboratory in Lahore.
The following Friday, Dawn and other news agencies began reporting the mystery had been solved: the younger brother of the shop’s owner confessed that he had spiked the sweets with a pesticide. He wanted “to teach him [his brother] a lesson,” he reportedly told police.
Khalid Mahmood, an 18-year-old, claimed his brother had “tortured him” and “insulted him on every trivial thing,” according to Pakistan’s SuchTV. According to multiple media reports in Pakistan, Mahmood said that he laced sweets with a poison named Chlorfenapyr. Police recovered an empty bottle of the chemical hidden in sunflower fields on the information provided by the accused.
