Sujit and Chandan, the two boys who were saved as they skipped the midday meal in Chhapra on July 16. Picture by Rakesh K Singh

Dharmasati Gandaman (Saran), July 19: Friendship saves lives. Known. Punishment too can.

Both played saviour on Tuesday at this nondescript village in Saran district, around 90km northwest of Patna, the day spurious midday meal was served at Gandaman primary school. While a schoolboy refused to eat the contaminated food after his buddy refused, two girls dodged the deadly meal because their grandmother took them home after finding them standing under the sun outside the classroom.

Sujit, a Class II student, inspired his classmate Chandan to not to have the food. He told The Telegraph on Friday: “The vegetable served at the school on Tuesday was blackish. As it tasted bitter, I did not eat the food and decided to take it home. I offered it to my elder sister, who also refused to have it. She told me to give it to the goat. When I did so, even the goat refused to eat the food served to us at the school.”

Chandan did not even taste the midday meal because his trustworthy friend Sujit did not. “I am grateful to God for saving my child. But, at the same time, I feel bad for my neighbours who have lost their children,” Sujit’s father Chandrama Mahto said.

“Virtues still help. Chandan survived just because he had trust in his friend. This is a lesson for every human being,” said a resident of the village, still visibly shocked over the death of 23 children after eating midday meal at the school.

The two girls — Class II student Rajan Kumari and Manju of Class III — skirted death because they were punished. Their teacher asked them to stand outside the classroom under the sun because they had not covered their notebooks. They were depressed after they were driven out of the classroom. Heads down, they stood under the sun like obedient students.

In the meantime, their grandmother was passing by the school. When she saw her granddaughters standing outside, she took them home before the midday meal was served at the school.

Rajan and Manju’s father Dinesh Mahto was all praise for his mother for bringing her daughters home before the midday meal was served on the fateful day.

“I would have felt bad for my mother’s act on any other day because she had brought my daughters home from school without informing the authorities. But in this case her action saved my daughters. Had she not felt bad for her granddaughters standing under the sun that day, they would not have been alive today,” he said.

A villager said: “The providential escape of Rajan and Manju proves joint families are not irrelevant in today’s society. Had they not stayed with their grandmother, they too might have consumed the spurious food and taken ill.”