Tragedy struck Kushinagar when four children, including three siblings, died after consuming poisonous toffees they picked up outside their homes at Latur Tola village in Kasya police circle on Wednesday morning.
The victims' parents belong to the Scheduled Tribe and are daily-wage labourers.
Additional Superintendent of Police of Kushinagar, Ritesh Kumar Singh, said the police were informed that the children died after eating the toffees at Latur Tola village and an investigation had been initiated.
The police have seized toffee wrappers for examination and locals are being questioned.
The police suspect that someone had thrown the poison-laced toffees on the road. The police are now awaiting the autopsy reports to know about the poison used to lace the toffees.
Quoting the villagers, Sub-Divisional Magistrate Varun Kumar Pandey said that Devi, the head of Latur Tola, was sweeping the house in the morning when she stumbled upon five toffees and nine rupees in a polythene bag. She gave three toffees to her grandchildren and a toffee to a neighbour's child. But soon after consuming the toffee, the four children fainted on the ground.
"The sick children were taken to the district hospital by the locals where doctors pronounced all four dead. The deceased include three siblings Manjana (5), Sweety (3) and two-year-old Samar. The other victim was five-year-old Arun, the only son of Balesar, who lives in the neighborhood," Pandey said.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief over the incident and ordered a probe and directed officials to provide relief to the bereaved families and take necessary action.
The locals alleged that the delay in the arrival of an ambulance was one of the reasons for the deaths of the children.
Meanwhile in Ghaziabad, three labourers were killed and two others seriously injured when the boundary wall of an under construction building of a school collapsed at Pratap Vihar locality on Tuesday.
Officials and workers of Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation were getting sewer lines laid late in the night when the boundary wall of the adjacent school collapsed on the five labourers working there. Soon, local police and fire brigade teams rushed to the spot and took the labourers to MMG hospital where doctors pronounced three of them dead.
The deceased were identified as Munkesh, Ahjaz and Tauqeer of Bihar. Two other labourers were injured and are undergoing treatment at the hospital.
In Bulandshahr, a man and his two sons were killed in a road accident in Secunderabad Kotwali area on Wednesday.
As per reports, Shakir was heading to Bulandshahr from Meerut with his two sons, Sanib and Uzair, when their speeding car rammed into a tree near Gulavathi. All three died on the spot. Later police personnel reached the spot and shifted their bodies to the mortuary.