Polo: a Swiss inquiry and a company's reply
Published 7 October 2026
In July 2018, ten months after the deaths, a team from the Swiss non-governmental organisation Public Eye travelled to Yavatmal. Its report, The Yavatmal Scandal, opened with the case that the record has followed since the first deaths. It gave the time of Bandu Chandrabhan Sonule's death as 1:35 p.m. on Saturday, September 23, 2017, at the Vasantrao Naik Government Medical College, and quoted the autopsy report as finding "death due to poisoning". It said he had been tied to his bed by his hands and feet during convulsions, that his wife Geeta had pawned her gold necklace to pay for the trip, and that he earned about four Swiss francs a day as a sprayer. Public Eye's report gives his age as 42 and Geeta's as 35, where The Hindu gave 40 and 39. Where sources differ, the record leaves the ages with the outlet that gave them.
Public Eye's claim was narrower than the title suggests, and it is worth setting out as the organisation set it out. Its press release of Tuesday, September 18, 2018 said that from July to October 2017 some 800 agricultural workers were poisoned while spraying cotton in Yavatmal district and over 20 died, and that "a key product implicated in the affair" was Polo, made by Syngenta at Monthey in Switzerland. It said Polo had been banned in Switzerland since 2009. The organisation described its inquiry as based on interviews with survivors and families, Indian reports and Swiss export documents obtained under a freedom of information law.
The product's chemistry was specific. According to the report, Polo's active ingredient is diafenthiuron, which paralyses and then kills sap-feeding insects, and which in cotton is mainly used against whiteflies. The report said it is one of 40 Syngenta pesticides that the Pesticide Action Network classes as "highly hazardous", that it was commercialised in 1991, banned in the European Union in 2002 and in Switzerland in 2009, and that the European Chemicals Agency describes it as "toxic if inhaled" and capable of causing organ damage through prolonged or repeated exposure. Those are the report's descriptions of the regulatory record, each attributed in the report to the body that issued it.
The export figures came from Swiss authorities. Public Eye said that, despite months of resistance from Syngenta, a freedom of information request produced figures showing the company exported over 126 tonnes of diafenthiuron from Switzerland in 2017: 75 tonnes to India, 50 tonnes to South Africa and 1.5 tonnes to Colombia. The press release gave the total as 126.5 tonnes. The report said diafenthiuron was unusual among Syngenta's hazardous products because it is produced in Switzerland, and the press release said it is exported to countries of the South. A motion by the National Councillor Lisa Mazzone asked Swiss authorities to ban the export of pesticides prohibited in Switzerland for health or environmental reasons.
The report's reconstruction of the hospital ward adds testimony the press had not carried. It described Sumesh Kanande, 38, of Lomi village, who said he had sprayed a cocktail of pesticides, including Polo and Monocil, three days running, passed out, and woke four days later tied to his bed, with a dozen other sprayers also tied. It described Haribhau Kumbhekar, 53, of Bhari, who said he had sprayed a mix including Polo for 12 days in a row and who, a year later, tired easily and lost his train of thought while his daughter Annapurna answered for him. These are accounts given to Public Eye's reporters, and the report does not say they were confirmed by medical records.
On causation, the report was careful. It noted that Sonule, Kanande and Kumbhekar had each sprayed Polo, but in combination with other insecticides, fungicides and plant growth regulators, and wrote: "It's impossible to say which specific substance or combination of substances was responsible for poisoning them." It then turned to what it called more clear-cut cases. Hiroman Soyam, 40, said he had filled his canister with Polo and water only; the day was hot and windy, the spray blew into his face, and the next day his cheeks, eyes and chest were swollen, he had a fever and diarrhoea and could barely speak or see. He had still not recovered a year later, his wife Archana said.
A second case was Purushottam Khadse of Inzala, who was admitted after applying Polo mixed with water and recovered after several days, saying he would never use it again. The report counted these as single-product cases. In its later fact sheet, Public Eye wrote that in its own inquiry it had identified over 50 victims who reported using Polo, and about half of them reported using Polo only. That is Public Eye's count of people who told its team they used the product and it does not establish that Polo caused their symptoms; the organisation presented it as evidence of involvement.
The labelling findings were part of the claim. The report described the Polo sack in Khadse's house, which carried a blue warning triangle with the words "Danger", the instruction to avoid inhalation and contact with eyes and to wear protective clothing, mask, goggles and boots, and the line "No specific antidote is known. Apply symptomatic therapy." It said all of that was printed in English and Hindi, and none in Marathi, the language most people there speak. A leaflet in 12 languages including Marathi was stuck to the package, in very small print, and the report said the state's own SIT had found the leaflet "not legible" and so not understandable or followable.
Public Eye measured that against the FAO code of conduct, which it said required "clear and concise labelling" (it cited Article 5.2.4.7) and, in Article 3.6, that pesticides requiring uncomfortable, expensive or not readily available protective equipment be avoided for small-scale users in hot climates. The report described a local safety kit it had seen, a plastic apron, disposable gloves, glasses, a mask and a cap, which Kanande had been given by a government representative and which the reporters found hard to breathe in. The kit was sponsored, the report said, by one of India's biggest agribusiness companies.
At a shop in Ghatanji the reporters said they found the shopkeeper writing mixing ratios on containers with a felt-tip pen and recommending mixing an insecticide with a fungicide when infestation was serious. They said farmers sign a ledger, or stamp it with an inked thumb if they cannot write, to confirm they have been given safety instructions and take responsibility for safe use. A Syngenta "Certificate of Recognition" hung on the shop wall, and the shopkeeper said he did not receive protective equipment from the companies. This is one shop's account to Public Eye, and the organisation did not claim to have surveyed all retailers.
Syngenta disputed the account. According to Public Eye, in an official counter-statement and in media reports Syngenta called its findings and allegations "salacious and incorrect" and denied that Polo was involved in the 2017 poisonings. The Swiss organisation's report said Syngenta India had stated in October 2017 that Polo had been used successfully by farmers across the country for 14 years without reported fatal incidents, and that other reasons, such as the height of the plants, farmers' negligence and the mixing of pesticides, might explain the incidents. The record reports the company's position as the company's, and as relayed by Public Eye.
Public Eye answered the company point by point, and the pairs show where the dispute sat. On Syngenta's statement that there was no evidence Polo was responsible, Public Eye replied that Indian and Swiss media had named Polo among the products involved and that PAN India's report had done so immediately. On Syngenta's statement that the SIT exempted it, Public Eye said the SIT blamed mainly farmers and climate but also recommended banning monocrotophos and pesticides for which no antidote is known, and cited the SIT's mention of thiourea compounds, of which diafenthiuron is one. It said the SIT report was "heavily criticized" for blaming farmers.
On Syngenta's statement that it was the first company to respond, working with the district administration on protective equipment, safe handling training and treatment, and that its mobile health clinics had reached more than 25,000 farmer families and it had distributed more than 10,000 protective kits, Public Eye said its team had interviewed dozens of victims in numerous villages and could not identify one person who had received training, medical assistance or protective equipment from Syngenta. It invited the company to say when and where the 10,000 suits were handed out and who used the clinics. The fact sheet also quoted a farmer-side voice, Dewanand Pawar, quoted on Swiss television saying he had never seen anyone from Syngenta there and that only the pesticide sellers came to the villages.
The dates of the state's ban became part of the argument as well. Public Eye wrote that diafenthiuron formulations were among five on which Maharashtra declared a 60-day temporary ban in November 2017, and again in June 2018, and that the state sent a proposal to the Central Insecticides Board for a permanent ban on five pesticides including the 50 percent diafenthiuron formulation. Where sources differ, the Firstpost report put the proposal in October 2017 as a measure the state "may" take, and the Indian Express in June 2018 had Katkar describing the 60-day stop. The sources agree on the five formulations and on the 60-day limit, and differ on when the first order took effect.
Public Eye also took up Syngenta's claim that Polo is not banned in India. It wrote that state governments cannot declare permanent bans, that Maharashtra had asked the centre for one without success, and that Syngenta is the only company selling Polo under that name, though other makers sell diafenthiuron products under other names. On the claim that production had moved to China, it said the export notifications from Switzerland's federal office showed 75 tonnes exported to India in 2017, and that where it was now made did not change where the 2017 material was made.
Public Eye's conclusion, in its press release, was stated as a view: that "a credible assessment could only conclude that products as toxic as Polo cannot be used safely" in the conditions it found, where farmers lack protective equipment and information, and that voluntary industry commitments fail to protect them. It tied the case to a proposed Swiss Responsible Business Initiative that would require due diligence by companies headquartered in Switzerland. Those are the organisation's arguments in a policy campaign, set out here beside the company's denial, and no court had ruled on either in 2018.
The reporters' account of the Yavatmal hospital in the same report added a treatment question raised in the PAN report. It said all serious cases were treated with atropine, the standard antidote for organophosphate poisoning, because the hospital lacked the knowledge of the substances and the diagnostic tools to do otherwise. It said Sonule, who had told staff and his wife that he had used Polo mixed with other substances he could not name, was given atropine, and that in high doses atropine can itself cause agitation, hallucinations, delirium, cramps and coma. "The question of whether toxic mixes of pesticides were the sole cause of the victims' symptoms, or whether the treatment of all patients with Atropine had also had a negative impact on their health, is difficult to answer," the report said. That sentence is the report's own and was not tested in a clinical review.
By the end of 2018, then, the Yavatmal deaths had acquired a second public account, written in Switzerland. It named a product and a company, relied on interviews and an export record, and drew a flat denial. The first account, the state's, had named farmers' conduct and the weather. The next stage of the story was to test the second account in forums where evidence is weighed, beginning with a legal aid decision in Switzerland and a criminal complaint in 2020.
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