Spray season, 2017
Published 7 October 2026
In the cotton fields of Yavatmal district, the intensive spraying season of 2017 ran from about the start of July to the first days of September, according to an Indian Express report on the outbreak. The report ties the rise in deaths and hospital admissions to that spraying curve. At the government medical college in Yavatmal town, it counted 24 admissions in July, 114 in August and 231 in September, and said more than 450 other people went to rural hospitals run by the Public Health Department over the same weeks. The sick arrived at the wards long before the public noticed.
The first death in the Indian Express account is that of Devidas Madavi, 57, a farm hand from Kalamb town. The paper reports that he took up pesticide spraying for the first time that year, for an employer named Amar Gurnule, and was dead by August 19, twelve days after he had sprayed. His wife Mangala told the reporter she did not understand how an ordinary-looking illness could kill him. The official cause recorded was "accidental (passive) inhalation of pesticides". The same report says he began with diarrhoea within five days of starting to spray, was taken to the rural hospital at Kalamb and then moved to the government medical college.
Spraying paid better than other farm work, and that detail runs through almost every account. The Indian Express reported that labourers earned Rs 350 a day for spraying against Rs 250 for other operations, and that they understood the extra pay as a price for hazard, though none said an officer had ever told them what precautions to take. The paper added that farmers mostly went by what the privately run Krushi Seva Kendras, the shops that sell pesticides, told them, and that the printed instructions on packets were too small for many to read.
By late September the pattern had a name in the press, and the name was a product. On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, The Hindu reported that nine farmers had died after spraying "Profex Super" on their Bt cotton in Yavatmal. The source of the claim was the Vasantrao Naik Shetkari Swavalamban Mission, the Maharashtra government's task force on farm distress. Its chief, Kishor Tiwari, said four more farmers had lost their vision and about 70 were being treated at the government medical college. The mission's statement said farmers had been forced into "continuous uncontrolled" spraying by bollworm and whitefly attacks, and that the farmers who died had failed to take precautions. The same article describes Profex Super as a combination of profenofos and cypermethrin and quotes Tiwari saying experts did not understand why it was killing people, because the mixture is not generally regarded as very toxic.
That early framing, farmers and sprayers who did not know how to handle what they were spraying, would be contested for years. But the first press accounts did not have the luxury of later documents. They had wards, and they had names.
On the ground in Manoli village, the death that drew attention was that of Bandu Sonule, a farm labourer. The Hindu's Oct 7 report says he went on September 19 to the neighbouring village of Amdi to spray Bt cotton on a farm owned by a man identified as Shakar Rao Choudhari, came home that evening complaining of irritation in his eyes, lost his sight, and was taken first to a hospital in Ghatanji and then to the Vasantrao Naik Government Medical College, where he died on September 23. The Wire's account gives the same dates. Where sources differ, it is on his widow: The Hindu names her Geeta, 39, while the Indian Express names the widow of Bandu Sonule as Deepa, 43. The Wire quotes a daughter named Geeta. This account uses Sonule's name and dates, which all three agree on, and leaves the widow's name to the reader's judgment.
The Hindu adds that Sonule's death was what first made the local activist Devanand Pawar's Shetkari Nyay Hakka Samiti, a farmers' justice committee, raise the matter publicly, and that two days after Sonule's death the administration sent a local agriculture officer to Manoli with pamphlets of precautions. The village sarpanch quoted in the same piece, Gunwant Lengure, said the cotton plants stood taller than six feet that year, so sprayers had to hold their nozzles above their heads, and that yields had fallen so far that growers sprayed heavily to recover at least their input costs.
A farmer from another village, Ramesh Pachpore, disagreed with the height explanation in the same article, saying that pulses such as tur grow taller than six feet and have been sprayed for years without causing deaths of this kind. That disagreement, between height and chemistry, between handling and product, is where the story's central argument starts.
At the Yavatmal medical college, The Hindu described a patient, Maruti Barbhate, 35, of Bellora village, tied with ropes to a bed in Ward Number 12 since the previous Friday, after he came into contact with pesticide on September 29. His sister-in-law told the paper it took 12 men to hold him down. He owned three acres and had been regarded as the village's expert sprayer. The same report says the hospital's dean told it that 11 farmers and farm labourers had died there in five weeks and that more than 472 had been admitted in three months for the same illness.
The numbers in these early reports do not line up, and they come from different counters. In the same report, The Hindu quotes Kishor Tiwari of the farm-distress task force saying 19 farmers had died in the district and more than 1,800 had been reported ill, while the dean's own hospital count was 11 deaths and 472 admissions. The two figures come from different owners, with different scopes: the task force chairman counted district-wide reports, the hospital counted its own wards. Where sources differ, the record keeps them apart and does not add them together. The dean is named Ashok Rathod in that report but Ashok Dhawad in another Hindu report, so the record quotes his hospital's figures without relying on either spelling.
On Wednesday, October 4, 2017, the Times of India reported that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had announced, a day earlier, an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh to the next of kin of farmers and labourers who died while spraying in Yavatmal. The same article says an inquiry had been ordered under the assistant chief secretary (home), that the government would run a safe-use awareness campaign and distribute free masks, and that the paper's count was 18 dead and 467 affected people admitted to government hospitals. It noted that, even in the normal course, such a cluster of unnatural deaths ought to have been reported to the administration, and quoted a source saying the matter reached the higher levels only after it appeared in the media.
Compensation was contested from day one. The Times of India reported that villagers from Kalamb tehsil submitted a memorandum to the collector on Tuesday asking for Rs 10 lakh, the sum paid to those who died in a recent Mumbai stampede. Nitin Khadse of Jalka village was quoted asking why the government discriminated between those who died in Mumbai and in Yavatmal, when both had died earning a living. The Indian Express recorded the widow of Bandu Sonule saying she would beg Rs 2 lakh and give it to the government if they would return her husband. The Hindu quoted Geeta Sonule saying the same thing in nearly the same words.
The Indian Express also reported two dates that mark how late the state's formal response was. It wrote that on October 3, two and a half months after the first death, the government ordered a probe and announced the Rs 2 lakh compensation. It added that, on the Friday before its Sunday report, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court issued notices on a public interest petition seeking criminal action against officials and pesticide companies. At that time, it wrote, no action had been taken against anyone, while the Minister of State for Agriculture, Sadabhau Khot, said officials responsible would be made answerable.
The geographic scope also widened quickly. The Indian Express report cites at least 12 further deaths under inquiry in Akola (5), Amravati (2), Nagpur (2), Bhandara (2) and Buldana (1), in addition to 17 deaths in Yavatmal since July 19. The Wire reported that, across Vidarbha's 11 districts, more than 32 deaths had been reported and close to 800 people were in hospital, but that Yavatmal stood out because 20 farmers and labourers died there in a short period. These are different counters again: one is a newspaper's tally of deaths under inquiry by district, the other a news site's regional estimate. They are listed here side by side, and no total is offered.
The early explanations offered by officials pointed to conditions rather than to products. The Wire quotes Subhash Nagare, joint director of agriculture for the Amravati division, saying the crop stood above five feet, farmers had to spray above their heads, and hot dry winds had blown the spray back on to their faces. He said the department had examined agriculture service centres and closed 47 for not following the rules. A farmer-activist view ran the other way: Kishor Tiwari told The Wire the deaths were not accidents and blamed the pesticide companies, while Devanand Pawar said lower-ranking officials would be suspended and later return to their jobs.
By the first week of October 2017, then, three things were already on the record. There was a ward full of people with a recognisable pattern of symptoms, with diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea, stomach ache and visual impairment listed in the Indian Express account. There was a government that had announced compensation and an inquiry only after the newspapers had run the story. And there was an argument, between the way the poison was handled and the way it was made and sold, that the next chapters trace through the hospital wards, the commission notices and the courts.
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