Six years on: survivors, the bill and the Basel evidence order
Published 7 October 2026
Six years after the spraying season, Down To Earth went back to Yavatmal and found the aftermath was larger than the 2017 numbers suggested. Its report of Thursday, October 26, 2023 said the health effects on survivors it spoke to were still present and "on a far larger scale than previously imagined". It opened with Geeta Agalave, whose husband Shankar Nago Agalave went out to spray Polo on their 1.6 hectare Bt cotton field on September 24, 2017, a Sunday. He felt nauseated, came home unable to see properly, was referred from a Yavatmal district hospital to a private hospital in Nagpur, and died after five days, where doctors told the family it was pesticide poisoning.
The magazine's count of the season differs again from earlier ones. It said Shankar Agalave was one of the 21 farmers who died in Yavatmal district in 2017 to 2018, the highest of any district, with 63 in total across 15 districts in Maharashtra. It said the SIT's report recorded 886 patients hospitalised in Yavatmal in 2017 to 2018 for pesticide poisoning. That 886 is the SIT's number as Down To Earth quoted it, over a period labelled 2017 to 2018, and it does not match the Indian Express's 507 admissions for 2017 or the dean's 472, which were hospital or department figures for narrower periods. Where sources differ, the labels differ, and none of the reports gives the definition behind each.
Geeta Agalave's family received Rs 1 lakh in compensation from the state government after her husband's death, the report said. That figure does not match the Rs 2 lakh announced on October 3, 2017 or the Rs 4 lakh later directed by the High Court, and the report does not explain the gap. It may reflect the sum her family actually received, a different scheme or an error, and the record does not decide among them. What the report says is that, because the matter of the pesticides on sale was not addressed, she joined the wife of another deceased farmer and a severe-poisoning survivor in the Basel lawsuit. "What happened to our family should not happen to anyone else," she said, in Hindi, as the magazine translated it.
The survivors' stories, in the same report, put figures on the long tail. Vivek Ade sprayed in August 2017 when about 30 percent of his crop was already destroyed, felt a burning in his eyes within two hours, was admitted to a government hospital for three days and then treated for ten days in the intensive care unit of a private hospital. Six years later, according to the report, he had lost 25 percent of his vision, had severe photosensitivity and little stamina, and had trouble with manual labour or even walking. He told the magazine he could not lift a chair or walk more than a few minutes, or step out in the sun.
Manish Bhoyar, an agricultural worker in Rohatek village, told the magazine that in autumn 2017 a farm owner asked him to spray two pesticides, including Polo. After 14 days in three hospitals and Rs 80,000 in treatment costs, the report said, he still fell ill frequently, had breathing trouble and visited the local hospital every fortnight. His wife Kavita said family income had fallen from Rs 13,000 to 15,000 a month to Rs 3,000 to 5,000, and that she found work only three times a week at Rs 200 a day, sometimes less because she refused spraying work. The report said such families got a one-time payment of Rs 5,000 from the state. These are interviews, and the report does not report medical records for them.
The magazine tied the survivors to the regulatory delay. It wrote that there had been an "inordinate delay" in enacting the Pesticides Management Bill to replace the Insecticides Act of 1968. According to the report, a draft was released for comment in February 2018, tabled in Parliament in 2020 and sent to a parliamentary panel, and a similar bill was in discussion in 2008 without a breakthrough. The Scroll report cited earlier had said the Centre announced a draft Pesticides Management Bill in December, so the sources differ on whether the draft was announced in December 2017 or released in February 2018. Both can be true of different stages and the reports do not say.
On the review of older pesticides, Down To Earth gave dates. It said that in July 2013 the agriculture department began reviewing a list of 66 pesticides through an expert committee, and that on May 14, 2020 the Centre issued a draft order to ban 27 of them. In a "u-turn", it wrote, a draft notification published on February 16 went back on the proposal, saying just three of the 27 were "fit to be banned", after the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers opposed the ban. KV Biju of the Swadeshi Andolan said the move was meant to protect pesticide companies. That is his charge, as quoted, and the report does not carry a ministry reply.
The report said Biju had filed two petitions in the Supreme Court in 2017 and 2018 to ban a total of 84 pesticides, merged with a third by the activist Kavitha Kuruganti for 106, with hearings covering a total of 116. It said the Supreme Court in July had observed that the Centre kept forming committees to review the 27, and that on September 29 the government issued an order to ban four hazardous pesticides: dicofol, dinocap, methomyl and monocrotophos. The report then pointed out that the monocrotophos ban was qualified. The order allowed sale, distribution or use of monocrotophos 36 percent SL "only for clearance of existing stock till its expiry period".
That qualification closes a loop opened by the SIT report. The SIT had recommended a complete ban on monocrotophos in its report of 2017, and Maharashtra had asked the Centre to ban it and four other products permanently. According to PAN India, as the magazine reported, the Centre did not respond. Narasimha Reddy told the magazine the state "can only prohibit the use temporarily", and the later order did not ban the chemical outright. The magazine's account of the Centre's action in 2023 is the first national measure on the 2017 recommendation in this record, six years after the deaths.
On the company side, the magazine quoted Syngenta India's emailed reply. The company, it said, "was not involved in any civil or criminal proceedings on the ground in connection with the tragic events in Yavatmal and ... neither Syngenta nor any Syngenta product was deemed responsible for these events". Tehseen Zaidi, head of communications at Syngenta India, said that in the Basel proceedings "we will be able to clearly demonstrate that the NGOs' allegations are baseless; reinforcing the findings of the independent SIT that was established in 2017". The magazine also reported, as an aside, that Syngenta had responded that it does not manufacture Polo.
Where sources differ, that last report sits against Public Eye's statement in 2018 that Syngenta is the only company selling Polo, "its brand", and that the 75 tonnes exported to India in 2017 was diafenthiuron made in Switzerland. The magazine's report does not give the wording of the reply and does not say who it believed was the manufacturer. The company's 2018 answer, as Public Eye quoted it, had said production might have moved to China. The matter of who made, patented and distributed the Polo in the plaintiffs' fields is part of what the Basel court has to decide, and Narasimha Reddy told the magazine there is limited clarity in India about who holds the patent, who manufactures and who distributes.
The legal story moved in June 2025. ECCHR's release of Monday, June 30, 2025 said the Basel Civil Court had decided on June 17, a Tuesday, to initiate an assessment of the evidence regarding the victims' use of Polo. The plaintiffs state that the 2017 poisonings were the result of using Polo, the release said, which is not permitted for sale in the EU or Switzerland, and "two died". It called the case the first civil lawsuit from the Global South against an agrochemical company over pesticide poisonings. It repeated that the plaintiffs filed in June 2021 under Swiss product liability law through the firm Schadenanwälte, supported by ECCHR, Public Eye and PAN India.
The release gave a date for the legal aid that differs from the 2022 coverage. It said the court granted legal aid "in June 2022", which it read as an indication that the court in principle considers Syngenta can be held liable for harm caused abroad by its hazardous products. The ECCHR release of 2022 was dated July 28, the Times of India said in August 2022 that the decision came "over a month ago", and Down To Earth said the hearing was in August 2022. Scroll wrote that the court ruled in July 2022. Where sources differ, the decision date is June, July or August 2022 depending on the account, and the record says only "summer 2022".
The Swiss evidence order is a narrower step than headlines suggested, and the sources describe its limits. Scroll reported that a Public Eye spokesperson said the court would go through the evidence submitted in the written submissions and most likely hold witness hearings and party interviews, to see whether it was well enough established that the claimants or their deceased husbands used Polo. No new evidence could be submitted at that point, the spokesperson said. If the court found the fact established, proceedings would continue and the court would decide the next step; if not, the court could reject the case. The spokesperson said this phase was likely to take a while.
The Times of India said the same in plainer terms. Its report of July 2, 2025 said the entire case "hinges on the proceedings to determine whether the victims used Polo at all". It said that a negative answer "would lead to a final decision", which meant the court had fixed the issue in the case, and that 22 farmers died of accidental inhalation during the 2017 cotton season. It added that a week before, the court had limited its proceedings to the question of whether Polo was used, and that further proceedings, if any, would be announced after that. The report's source for these procedural points is anonymous.
Where sources differ, the Times of India's account of the order as a limitation is stricter than ECCHR's account of it as "a significant step" and a "strong signal". Both describe the same decision of June 17. The first stresses that the case can end on a negative finding about use of the product, the second that the court has begun taking evidence. Neither describes a ruling on the question of whether Polo is defective, which remains open. The Counterview, citing the same events, called it a "historic step toward corporate accountability" and said Schadenanwälte, a Zurich-based firm in its account, led the case legally. ECCHR placed the firm in Basel in 2022, so that detail of its location differs between the sources and is not material here.
The plaintiffs' claims and the company's denial thus stood where they had stood since 2018, except that a Swiss court now had procedures in place to examine the first link in the chain. Scroll noted the two earlier outcomes: the OECD complaint, accepted in December 2020, with four mediation meetings in 2021, ended in 2022 "without a positive outcome". It quoted representatives of poisoned individuals saying the Basel decision sent a message to Indian farmers that it is possible to challenge a huge company. That is a statement of hope by interested parties, and the court's schedule for witnesses and interviews was not public in the sources reviewed here.
PAN India's own release on the 2025 decision said that "eight years ago, dozens of farmers and agricultural workers suffered serious poisoning in connection with the use of Polo, and two died", and listed the support network of ECCHR, Public Eye and PAN India. The Scoop copy carried the same text. That sentence is unusual in this record because it uses two different scales in one line: dozens poisoned and two dead in connection with Polo, set beside the over 20 deaths in Yavatmal as a whole. The two numbers concern different groups, those the complainants link to Polo and all those who died in the season, and the sources do not say how many of the season's dead used Polo.
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