Death toll reaches 20 in Pakistan's toxic sweetmeat case

With six more persons dying on Sunday, the toll in the tragic poisonous sweetmeat incident in Pakistan's Punjab province reached 20, officials said.

At least 20 people died of consuming poisonous sweetmeat include three children and eight of a single family. The sweetmeat was brought from a shop by Sajjad Hussain in Layyah district on Thursday, some 325 kilometers from Lahore, to celebrate the birth of a child.

It was served to eight members of Sajjad's family. Their condition deteriorated soon after eating the sweet. They were rushed to the nearby hospital. "Sajjad along with his six brothers and a sister died while 12 others who consumed the poisonous sweet also breathed their last," Executive District Officer Ameer Abdullah said.

Fourteen people, including three children, had died till Friday, police said. Abdullah said more than 30 people who consumed the same sweet are still under treatment in Nishter Hospital Multan and district headquarters hospital Layyah and condition of some of them is critical.

He said the health department has sealed the sweet shop and seized the "remaining poisonous sweetmeat" and sent for laboratory examination. "We have also lodged an FIR the Pure Food Act against the shop owner," Abdullah said.

District Police Officer Layyah Muhammad Ali Zia said that the shop owner Khalid Mahmoud was arrested. "Cheep imported liquid glucose is suspected to be used in manufacturing the sweetmeat at the shop instead of sugar (which costs more)," he said. Meanwhile, Punjab province's Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has announced ex gratia of Rs 500,000 (USD 4,771) to the next of the kin of those died.