Orissa government had received reports of 401 starvation deaths in nine years but none of them were true,a minister said today. Replying to a question in the assembly,Revenue and Disaster Management minister S N Patro said The allegations of starvation deaths were not true. The government,he said,had conducted probe into all the starvation death reports since 2000 according to the provisions of Orissa Relief Code under which one gazetted officer probed each case within 48 hours of the death of the concerned person. The investigations into starvation deaths were done in presence of local people,district collector,sarpanch,ward members and others,Patro said. Though there was no provision for postmortem on bodies in the relief code,the government conducted autopsy in 28 cases in order to bring transparency in the investigation,he said. While the highest number of 73 starvation death allegations were received in 2003,the number fell to 21 in 2008. Only three such allegations were received in 2009 (two from Kendrapara and one from Bhadrak districts in coastal region),the minister pointed out.
