NEW DELHI: At least 99 people have died and scores have been hospitalized in northern India after drinking toxic alcohol, triggering a crackdown against bootleggers, officials said Monday.
News of the deaths in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand has trickled in over the past three days, with police suspecting the moonshine had been cut with methanol.
Cheap, locally-made liquor is common in parts of rural India and bootleggers often add methanol — a highly toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an anti-freeze — to their product to increase its strength.
If ingested in large quantities, methanol can cause blindness, liver damage and death.
In one district of Uttar Pradesh 59 people had died after consuming toxic alcohol, police spokesman Shailendra Kumar Sharma told AFP.
In a neighboring district a senior police officer said nine had died, adding that 66 suspected bootleggers had been arrested and samples of the liquor sent to a laboratory for testing.
Police said at least 31 people died in neighboring Uttarakhand state and that two had been arrested on suspicion of supplying the liquor.
Newspaper reports said around 3,000 people linked with the illegal trade were arrested across Uttar Pradesh in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Hundreds of poor people die every year in India due to alcohol poisoning, mostly from consuming cheap alcohol.
In 2015, more than 100 people died in a Mumbai slum after drinking illegal moonshine.
Of the estimated 5 billion liters of alcohol drunk every year in India, around 40 percent is illegally produced, according to the International Spirits and Wine Association of India.
At least 99 dead after consuming toxic alcohol in India
At least 99 dead after consuming toxic alcohol in India
- Officials suspect high levels of methanol chemical were added to the locally-made liquor
- The chemical can cause blindness, liver damage and death if ingested in large quantities
Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado march in cities worldwide
- Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since January
CARACAS: Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado demonstrated Saturday in several cities worldwide to commemorate her Nobel Peace Prize win ahead of the prestigious award ceremony next week.
Dozens of people marched through Madrid, Utrecht, Buenos Aires, Lima and other cities in support of Machado, whose organization wants to use the attention gained by the award to highlight Venezuela’s democratic aspirations. The organization expected demonstrations in more than 80 cities around the world on Saturday.
The crowd in Lima carried portraits of Machado and demanded a “Free Venezuela.” With the country’s yellow, blue and red flag draped over their backs or emblazoned on their caps, demonstrators clutched posters that read, “The Nobel Prize is from Venezuela.”
Venezuelan Verónica Durán, who has lived in Lima for eight years, said Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize is celebrated because “it represents all Venezuelans, the fallen and the political prisoners in their fight to recover democracy.”
The gatherings come at a critical point in the country’s protracted crisis as the administration of US President Donald Trump builds up a massive military deployment in the Caribbean, threatening repeatedly to strike Venezuelan soil. Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is among those who see the operation as an effort to end his hold on power, and the opposition has only added to this perception by reigniting its promise to soon govern the country.
“We are living through times where our composure, our conviction, and our organization are being tested,” Machado said in a video message shared Tuesday on social media. “Times when our country needs even more dedication because now all these years of struggle, the dignity of the Venezuelan people, have been recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Machado won the award Oct. 10 for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
Machado, 58, won the opposition’s primary election and intended to run against Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo González, who had never run for office before, took her place.
The lead-up to the July 28, 2024, election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. It all increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary.
González sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest.
Meanwhile, Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in what ended up being an underwhelming protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. The following day, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term.
