Jyoti Singh (top) and Payel Pandey

The two girls of a Bansdroni school who died on Thursday after being taken ill during recess had consumed poison, a preliminary probe has revealed.

Cops, however, are not certain who fed the poison to 13-year-old Jyoti Singh and 11-year-old Payel Pandey, both students of Devendra Dwivedi School.

“The post-mortem reports will help us nail the cause of death but our initial probe reveals that the girls died of poisoning. We suspect they had consumed rat poison,” said S.N. Gupta, the deputy inspector-general of police (presidency range).

An autopsy surgeon who conducted the post-mortem said both girls died of the effects of the same poison.

The sleuths have seized the bags of Jyoti and Payel and sent the leftovers in their tiffin-boxes for forensic tests. One of the girls had allegedly told a school employee that a classmate had poisoned her.

“The girl made the allegation while being taken to MR Bangur hospital. Our officers spoke to the accused (name withheld) but she denied the charge, saying she was drawing a picture in a room and had not met Jyoti or Payel during the recess. We are probing all angles,” said an officer.

Sleuths will speak to the classmates of Jyoti and Payel on Saturday — the school was closed on Friday in memory of the duo — to find out whether the two girls and the accused were seen together during recess on Thursday.

The families of the deceased have not lodged any complaint against the nine-year-old suspect but Jyoti’s aunt Uma Devi said: “We are not sure but the friend could have poisoned the food the girls had brought from home. The three were good friends but the suspect was always jealous of Jyoti and Payel as they fared better than her in exams.” Payel’s cousin Dipika Chaubey echoed Uma Devi’s suspicion.

Dipika said Payel, whose father Umashankar is a schoolteacher in Buxar, Bihar, had carried “the usual chapattis and potato curry” for lunch. “Someone from the school called me around 2.15pm, saying Payel was ill. I rushed to the school and found Payel crying. I brought her home but later had to shift her to hospital as she started vomiting and complained of dizziness,” said Dipika.

Payel lived at her uncle’s Harisabha house in Bansdroni, just next to the suspect’s home. Jyoti lived with her parents around 400 metres away.