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Illicit liquor claims 143 in east India, 10 bootleggers arrested
December 16, 2011, Friday
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BOOTLEG liquor containing toxic methanol killed 143 people and sickened dozens more who drank the cheap, illicit brew bought at small shops in eastern India, officials said yesterday. Police arrested 10 suspected bootleggers.
Emergency medical teams rushed to the village outside Kolkata, and thousands of relatives, many of them wailing in grief, gathered outside the packed hospital at Diamond Harbour. Inside, dead bodies lay on the floor covered in quilts, while the ill waited on staircases to be treated. Groups of men sat in the halls with saline drips on their arms.
Abdul Gayen cried inconsolably for his son, Safiulla, a laborer who drank some of the liquor on Monday night and then complained of lightheadedness. When Safiulla woke up the next morning, he fell and began frothing at the mouth, Gayen said. He died before his family could get him to the hospital.
"Safiulla was the lone bread earner in our family. I don't know what will happen to us now," he said.
Illegal liquor operations flourish in the slums of urban India and among the rural poor who can't afford the alcohol at state-sanctioned shops. The hooch, often mixed with cheap chemicals to increase potency and profit, causes illness and death sometimes - and occasionally mass carnage.
Many of the victims - day laborers, street hawkers, rickshaw drivers - had gathered along a road near a railway station after work to drink the illicit booze they bought for 10 rupees (20 US cents) a half liter, less than a third the price of legal alcohol, district magistrate Naraya Swarup Nigam said. They later began vomiting, suffering piercing headaches and frothing at the mouth, he added.
Angry villagers later ransacked booze shops around the village of Sangrampur, about 30 kilometers south of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta.
Police arrested 10 people in connection with making and distributing the methanol-tainted booze and demolished 10 illicit liquor dens in the area, said Luxmi Narayan Meena, district superintendent of police.
Police officials said the liquor was from an illegal distillery in the village of Mograhat that supplies 70 shops in the area. Search is on for the kingpin of the operation, who has fled.
Drinking alcohol contains ethanol, whereas highly toxic methanol - a clear liquid that can be used as fuel, solvent or antifreeze - can induce comas and cause blindness and is deadly in high doses.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered an inquiry into the deaths, called for a meeting of the state's major political parties to address the problem and promised a crackdown. "I want to take strong action against those manufacturing and selling illegal liquor," she said.
"But this is a social problem also, and this has to be dealt with socially also along with action."
Emergency medical teams rushed to the village outside Kolkata, and thousands of relatives, many of them wailing in grief, gathered outside the packed hospital at Diamond Harbour. Inside, dead bodies lay on the floor covered in quilts, while the ill waited on staircases to be treated. Groups of men sat in the halls with saline drips on their arms.
Abdul Gayen cried inconsolably for his son, Safiulla, a laborer who drank some of the liquor on Monday night and then complained of lightheadedness. When Safiulla woke up the next morning, he fell and began frothing at the mouth, Gayen said. He died before his family could get him to the hospital.
"Safiulla was the lone bread earner in our family. I don't know what will happen to us now," he said.
Illegal liquor operations flourish in the slums of urban India and among the rural poor who can't afford the alcohol at state-sanctioned shops. The hooch, often mixed with cheap chemicals to increase potency and profit, causes illness and death sometimes - and occasionally mass carnage.
Many of the victims - day laborers, street hawkers, rickshaw drivers - had gathered along a road near a railway station after work to drink the illicit booze they bought for 10 rupees (20 US cents) a half liter, less than a third the price of legal alcohol, district magistrate Naraya Swarup Nigam said. They later began vomiting, suffering piercing headaches and frothing at the mouth, he added.
Angry villagers later ransacked booze shops around the village of Sangrampur, about 30 kilometers south of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta.
Police arrested 10 people in connection with making and distributing the methanol-tainted booze and demolished 10 illicit liquor dens in the area, said Luxmi Narayan Meena, district superintendent of police.
Police officials said the liquor was from an illegal distillery in the village of Mograhat that supplies 70 shops in the area. Search is on for the kingpin of the operation, who has fled.
Drinking alcohol contains ethanol, whereas highly toxic methanol - a clear liquid that can be used as fuel, solvent or antifreeze - can induce comas and cause blindness and is deadly in high doses.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered an inquiry into the deaths, called for a meeting of the state's major political parties to address the problem and promised a crackdown. "I want to take strong action against those manufacturing and selling illegal liquor," she said.
"But this is a social problem also, and this has to be dealt with socially also along with action."
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