100 chicken found dead near Sarnath
The spotting of nearly 100 dead chickens on Sunday at two spots near the famous Buddhist pilgrimage site of Sarnath has triggered a bird flu scare in the area. The birds were seen lying along the Varanasi-Ghazipur railway track in Lohia Nagar area under the Sarnath police station. The locals informed the State Animal Husbandry Department, and a team, led by Chief Veterinary Officer (Varanasi) B B Sings, visited the spot. The owner of a nearby poultry farm, Sudhir Singh, has been detained for questioning by the police. Officials also visited the farm, where they found 21 live birds. CVO Sings said the farm owner had denied that the dead birds belonged to his farm. It was while they were making preparations to bury the dead birds and to collect serum and blood samples of the birds alive, that news came of the recovery of more dead birds a short distance from Lohia Nagar. Fifty birds were found dead near a culvert at Nevadhi Sandaha village under the Chaubeypur police station, a kilometre from the Sarnath railway station. Villagers told officials that the birds had been lying there since Saturday. Since the birds were suspected to have been dead for more than 48 hours, they couldn't be used for collecting samples and the officials are in the process of burying them. "The dead birds from Lohia Nagar will be sent to the High Security Diseases Control Lab in Bhopal, while serum and blood samples taken from the living birds at the poultry will be sent to the lab in Pune. Only after the samples are tested at Pune and Bhopal can anything be said about possibility of bird flu,' the CVO said. While he added that the birds may have died due to overcrowding during transport or lack of water at a time when temperatures are on the rise, Sings did not rule out chances of bird flu. Additional City Magistrate Devi Das, who accompanied the team, has directed inspection of all the 14 poultry farms in a 5-km radius around Sarnath. Incidentally, on January 26, a consignment of 5,000 birds had arrived at Varanasi railway station on the Vibhuti Express from the bird flu-infected district of Birbhum in West Bengal. The consignment was brought by a local poultry owner, Dipu Sonkar, and immediately sent to poultries in Shahjahanpur (Uttar Pradesh) and Buxar in Bihar. The birds were later culled in Bihar and Shahjahanpur. "Though there are remote chances of bird flu at a time when summer is setting in, we are not taking any chances,' said the CVO.