The Supreme Court on Friday termed the deaths of about 32 tribal children in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat as “most unfortunate” and sought responses from the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh governments on providing compensation to the victims’ families and taking effective steps to protect other children suffering from severe malnutrition and a lack of drinking water facilities.
The cause of death, following visits by epidemiological teams, was confirmed to be measles-rubella, the petition said. He stated that despite the petitioner submitting written representations to the authorities and elected representatives of the area, the early warnings were ignored, leading to the tragedy. In January, a social worker had alerted the local authorities that a severe, undiagnosed paediatric epidemic was rapidly spreading among Baiga children in Balaghat. The district has no doctors, diagnostic facilities or essential medicines in its forest belt. The petition raised concerns about the surviving children in the Balaghat area and sought consolidated, time-bound directions and structural changes to ensure transparency in reporting deaths, immunisation drives, nutrition delivery and compensation to affected families. This has forced the tribal population to rely on unqualified practitioners, further threatening their existence, it added.
The nearest community health centre to Balaghat is almost 40 kilometres away, and even this centre lacks effective nursing care and emergency referral transport, the petition states. advocate Varun Thakur, who argued the petition, submitted that the problem concerned children of the Baiga tribe, which has a presence in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh due to the states’ common border While the bench was initially inclined to refer the matter to the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
The petition states that since January 2026, when the Balaghat-Seoni MP and local authorities were first informed of the worsening health situation among children, the authorities in Madhya Pradesh remained in a “bureaucratic slumber” until the first death occurred after August. The virus preys lethally on children whose immune systems are compromised by long-term protein-calorie malnutrition and a severe lack of vitamin A supplementation, it said. Sporadic health camps organised in January and February this year were prematurely abandoned without active surveillance, serological testing or vital cold-chain immunisation drives, the petition said.
