By Neville Lazarus, Asia Producer
The results of tests on blood samples from four children who are in a critical condition after eating contaminated school meals indicate "acute poisoning".
The food, served at the school in Bihar as part of an Indian government scheme, contained a toxic substance, according to the tests carried out at a clinic in Mumbai.
An unnamed government official said: "The poisonous substance was more than five times the commercial preparation available on the market."
Twenty-three children died and 30 others are still recuperating in hospital after eating the free school lunch on July 16.
A forensic report earlier showed the oil that the food was cooked in contained the pesticide monocrotophos at very high levels.
Thirty children are still in hospital The World Health Organisation said it had asked India to ban the toxic substance as far back as 2009.
It also warned that pesticide containers were not being disposed of properly in India and were being used by the poor to store water and food.
An arrest warrant has been issued for the headmistress of the school, Meena Devi, and her husband, who supplied groceries for the meal.
Their home was raided and five empty packets of insecticides were found. The couple went on the run soon after the tragedy.
Angry villagers subsequently attacked the house, which is now under police guard.
The children who died were between the ages of four and 10.
Some of them were buried near the entrance of the school, as a mark of their parents' protest.
Groceries for the meal were provided by the headmistress State education minister PK Shahi said it was impossible to give an assurance that such an incident would not occur again.
"As a minister, how can I guarantee that in 72,000 schools across the state, there won't be any poison in the food if somebody is hell bent on doing so?" the minister said.
The tragedy has provoked a national debate on the world's largest school-feeding programme and how it is implemented.
More than 120 million children are being fed a cooked meal through the scheme, which started in the 1960s.
It has been adopted at all government schools in India as a way of enrolling more children into schools and tackling malnutrition.
India has more than twice as many malnourished children as sub-Saharan Africa.
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