PATNA, India: At least 31 people died and 20 others were hospitalized in serious condition after allegedly drinking tainted liquor sold without authorization in eastern India, a top elected official said Thursday.
The deaths occurred Tuesday and Wednesday and the victims belonged to three villages in Saran district of Bihar state where the manufacturing, sale and consumption of liquor are prohibited.
The deaths were reported in a district government-run hospital where the sick were brought by their families for treatment, said Dr. S.D. Sinha, the hospital chief.
Sale and consumption of liquor were prohibited in Bihar state in 2016 after women's groups campaigned against poor workers splurging their meager incomes on drinking.
Police officer Santosh Kumar said several of the 20 hospitalized have lost their eyesight.
Several opposition parties, including the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, held protests Thursday outside the state legislature building to demand the state's liquor ban be scrapped and some monetary compensation provided to the bereaved families.
Sushil Modi, the state BJP leader, said more than 1,000 people have died after drinking tainted liquor since the ban was imposed six years ago. The BJP is in opposition in the state.
Nitish Kumar, the state's top elected official belonging to the socialist party Janata Dal, rejected their demands and said the ban on the sale of liquor was “not my personal wish but a response to the cries of the women of the state.”
Three people have been detained for questioning for allegedly selling spiked alcohol in the area, he said. Saran district is nearly 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of Patna, the Bihar state capital.
Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India, where illicit liquor is cheap and often spiked with chemicals such as pesticides to increase potency. Illicit liquor has also become a hugely profitable industry across India, where bootleggers pay no taxes and sell enormous quantities of their product to the poor at a cheap rate.
At least 28 people died and 60 others became ill from drinking tainted liquor in the western Indian state of Gujarat earlier this year. Gujarat is another Indian state where the manufacturing, sale and consumption of liquor are prohibited.
In 2020, at least 120 people died after drinking tainted liquor in India’s northern Punjab state.
Suspected tainted liquor kills at least 31 in eastern India
https://arab.news/bwfyh
Suspected tainted liquor kills at least 31 in eastern India
- Victims belong to villages where liquor manufacture, consumption are banned
- Indian police officer says 20 of the hospitalized have lost their eyesight
Trump says US used secret weapon to disable Venezuelan equipment in Maduro raid
- Trump said the US has removed the oil aboard seven oil tankers connected to Venezuela that it has seized but wouldn’t reveal where the ships are now
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said the US used a secret weapon he called “The Discombobulator” to disable Venezuelan equipment when the US captured Nicolás Maduro. Trump also renewed his threat to conduct military strikes on land against drug cartels, including in Mexico.
Trump made the comments in an interview Friday with the New York Post.
The Republican president was commenting on reports that the US had a pulsed energy weapon and said, “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
He said the weapon made Venezuelan equipment “not work.”
“They never got their rockets off. They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off,” Trump said in the interview. “We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us.”
Trump had previously said when describing the raid on Maduro’s compound that the US had turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas,” but he didn’t detail how they accomplished that.
The president also indicated the US will continue its campaign of military strikes and could extend it from South America into North America as the administration tries to target drug cartels.
“We know their routes. We know everything about them. We know their homes. We know everything about them,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit the cartels.”
When asked if the strikes could occur in Central America or Mexico, Trump said: “Could be anywhere.”
The US on Friday carried out a strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the first such action since Maduro’s capture.
It marks at least 36 known strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since early September that have killed at least 117 people.
Trump said the US has removed the oil aboard seven oil tankers connected to Venezuela that it has seized but wouldn’t reveal where the ships are now.
“I’m not allowed to tell you,” Trump said. “But let’s put it this way, they don’t have any oil. We take the oil.”
During the interview, the president also said that he was still trying to figure out where to hang the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, which she gave to him earlier this month. The prize was leaning against a statue in the Oval Office.
Trump also told the newspaper that the framework of an Arctic security deal he struck with NATO chief Mark Ruttte would give the US ownership of the land where American bases are located.
“We’ll have everything we want,” Trump said. “We have some interesting talks going on.”
Much of the potential deal remains unclear. Leaders of Denmark and Greenland have said the island’s sovereignty was non-negotiable and a NATO spokesperson said Rutte, in his conversations with Trump, did not propose any “compromise to sovereignty.”
The president said he would not go to the Super Bowl and called it a “terrible choice” for Bad Bunny and Green Day to perform at the game. He attended last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans.
