There are also reports of chicken deaths from a poultry farm in Pure Angan village in the Purwa block of Unnao district. The administration has, however, denied reports of the bird flu spreading in the district, and has constituted a team to look into the matter.

The officials of the Animal Husbandry Department say that birds found dead in Sitapur and Lakhimpur belong to the same group of imported chickens that were brought here from West Bengal on January 26. Though the administration claims that all the imported poultry have been culled, the fact remains that there is no trace of about 1,500 imported birds.

“The 5,000 chicks that came from West Bengal were sent to Shahjehanpur and a few other places. Most of them have been traced and culled,” Principal Secretary of Animal Husbandary R M Srivastava said. No fresh lot of chicks have come from the affected state to UP after January 26, Srivastava added.

He said that 1,500 chickens that were sent to Shahjehanpur from Varanasi were culled a day after it was brought here and another lot of 1,500 poultry sent to Awadhesh Poultry Farm in Lakhimpur was “tracked and destroyed’.

After there were reports of poultry deaths from Maholi block of Sitapur district, a team of Animal Husbandry Department had visited the poultry farm and had destroyed around 500 chicks.