NEW DELHI: Twenty-one laborers died after drinking toxic homemade liquor in northern India, police said Sunday, in the latest incident of alcohol poisoning in the country.
Police in Uttar Pradesh state’s Etah district said the victims started to vomit and fall sick, complaining of severe stomach aches and blurred vision after consuming the illicit moonshine late Friday.
Earlier the toll was reported at 17, with 12 people hospitalized. However four of those have since died, police said.
“Four more people succumbed to the poisoning. The total deaths are 21 now,” senior district police officer, Visarjan Singh Yadav, told AFP by telephone, adding that others remain ill in hospital.
A police officer told AFP that a local vendor was arrested late Saturday after police registered a formal case against him for culpable homicide.
“The vendor obviously mixed some chemical in the last batch... police are investigating the matter,” the officer, who requested anonymity, told AFP without specifying the chemical used in this case.
Bootleggers are often found adding methanol — a highly toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an anti-freeze or fuel — in their home-brew liquor to increase the alcoholic content of the drink.
If ingested, it can cause blindness and liver damage and can kill in larger concentrations.
The Press Trust of India reported locals saying that six people had lost their eyesight after drinking the tainted alcohol.
The incident prompted state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav to suspend five district officials, including two police officers, for neglect of duty.
He has offered 200,000 rupees ($3,000) in compensation to the families of those killed.
Hundreds of poor people die every year in India due to alcohol poisoning, mostly from consuming cheap hooch.
Most of Friday night’s victims were daily wage laborers and farmers too poor to afford branded alcohol who would usually buy a cheap mix from bootleggers after work.
In April, eight people died including two soldiers after drinking tainted liquor in the western desert state of Rajasthan.
More than 100 people died in Mumbai last year after drinking illegal homemade moonshine in a slum.
Nearly three billion liters of legally made liquor and an estimated two billion liters of hooch are consumed in India annually, according to the International Spirits and Wines Association.
21 die of alcohol poisoning in northern India
21 die of alcohol poisoning in northern India
Russia says captured Ukraine’s Siversk in key eastern region
- The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said
- He said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents
MOSCOW: Russia said Thursday its troops had seized full control of Siversk, a Ukrainian city in the eastern Donetsk region where fighting has intensified in recent weeks, though Ukraine denied the key settlement had been lost.
The Russian army has been slowly but steadily grinding through eastern Ukraine and taking ground from outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces, with some of the fiercest battles taking place in Donetsk.
Russia’s military chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Moscow’s forces had captured Siversk in a report to President Vladimir Putin during a televised meeting with army commanders.
The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said, thanking the commanders and soldiers “for their combat work.”
Putin said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents before the war, claiming that the Russian offensive was “practically impossible to hold back.”
The Ukrainian army’s eastern command denied Russian claims it had taken Siversk, saying that it “remains under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
“The enemy is trying to infiltrate Siversk in small groups, taking advantage of unfavorable weather conditions but most of these units are being destroyed on the approaches,” it added in a Facebook post.
Siversk is located about 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two major cities still under Ukrainian control in the Donbas — an industrial and mining region in Moscow’s sights.
Moscow earlier this month said it had captured Pokrovsk, a former road and rail hub also in Donetsk, but Kyiv claims fighting in the city is still ongoing.
Putin has said that Moscow is ready to fight on to seize the rest of the land it claims in eastern Ukraine if Kyiv does not give it up as part of a peace deal.
Eastern Ukraine has been ravaged since Russia launched its assault in February 2022, with tens of thousands of people killed and millions forced to flee their homes.
