On September 17, three farmers from Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district filed a lawsuit in a civil court in Basel, Switzerland, seeking monetary compensation from agrochemical giant Syngenta firm. Two of the applicants are women farmers who claim they have lost their husbands to poisoning due to spraying Syngenta’s Polo pesticide on their cotton fields in 2017. The third applicant himself is a farmer who survived the alleged poisoning. In 2017, over 700 cotton farmers and agricultural workers were hospitalised complaining of pesticide poisoning in the state’s Vidarbha region and at least 23 farmers died in Yavatmal alone. Majority of the victims belonged to Tribal communities.
— source newsclick.in | 19 Sep 2020