GUJRAT: A committee has started probing the incident of admission of 42 girl students to district headquarters hospital after they fell ill at their classrooms.

Class-VII students of Government Girls High School, Civil Lines-1, Jhelum, were hospitalised on Saturday after some of them started vomitting and others almost fainted.

Officials say a sudden mock exercise of a terrorist attack at the school a day earlier might have put the students into a trauma. They say the students might have turned semi-conscious because of smoke in the vicinity.

Initially, it was assumed that the students were panicked due to some anti-dengue spray, however, no evidence was found regarding such a spray as the college principal told the officials and media that some smoke arising from the nearby area or smell of an open drain passing through the school could be the cause. But that reason was also ruled out by the officials of education, health and other respective departments. On the directions of the chief minister, Punjab Education Minister Rana Mashhood along with senior functionaries of health and education departments arrived at the Jhelum school late on Saturday night to examine the situation.

The minister held a detailed meeting with the district government officials.

Talking to media, the minister said apparently there was no evidence of any cause of getting the students panicked within the boundary wall of the school; however the matter was being thoroughly probed by a team constituted by the CM.

The committee comprised education minister, Special Secretary (school education) Imran Sikandar and Secretary (health) Adnan Zafar.

He said all the respective departments swiftly responded to the emergency call and shifted the affected students to the hospital where they were discharged after three hours. He said no direction for dengue spray in educational institutions anywhere in Punjab had been issued nor it was conducted in the school.

The committee also recorded the statements of some parents of the students to ascertain the facts and causes of the incident.

A district government official told Dawn that the incident should also be probed from the aspect of mock exercise of a terrorist attack a day earlier and students might be traumatised due to the sudden exercise. “There must be some standard operating procedure for such exercises especially in girl schools.”

He said around six months ago an incident of dengue spray in a school near Domeli area of Jhelum had affected the students and this angle could also be looked into during investigation as students might have got panicky due to some smoke in the vicinity.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2016