Mumbai toxic booze death toll hits 100
Print Edition
The death toll from India’s latest case of mass bootleg liquor poisoning rose to 100 yesterday as authorities in Mumbai pledged to crack down on the illicit trade.
Dhananjay Kulkarni, deputy police commissioner in the western Indian city, announced the updated toll in Mumbai’s deadliest incident of alcohol poisoning for over a decade.
“The death toll is now 100, and 47 people are receiving treatment in hospital,” he said.
Victims first started to fall ill during the middle of last week after drinking the illegal homemade moonshine in a slum in the north of the city, India’s financial capital. “We are confident that we have seized all of the spurious liquor so the death toll may stabilize soon,” the deputy commissioner said.
Kulkarni said police had arrested two women accused of supplying the liquor, raising to seven the number of people detained for distributing the alcohol in the suburb of Malad.
He added that one of the women detained was suspected of having sold bootleg moonshine in the area for 10 years.
Police are still waiting for the results of an investigation to determine whether high levels of methanol were present in the so-called country liquor, Kulkarni added.
Methanol, a highly toxic form of alcohol used as anti-freeze or fuel, is often added to illicit booze in India as a cheap and quick method of raising the alcohol content.
The latest incident is the worst case of its kind to be recorded in Mumbai since 2004 when also around 100 people died.
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