Poisoned alcohol kills 143

ILLICIT alcohol has killed at least 143 people and made dozens more seriously ill, after the illegal brew was sold at small shops in a village in eastern India.

Emergency medical teams rushed to the village of Sangrampur, about 20 miles south of Kolkata, as thousands of relatives, many of them wailing in grief, gathered outside the packed hospital. Inside, dead bodies lay on the floor covered in quilts, while the ill waited to be treated. Groups of men sat in the halls with saline drips in their arms.

Abdul Gayen cried inconsolably for his son, Safiulla, a labourer who drank some of the brew on Monday night and then complained of light-headedness. When Safiulla woke up the next morning, he fell and began frothing at the mouth, Mr 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 alcohol operations flourish in the urban slums and among the rural poor who can’t afford to buy drink at state-sanctioned shops. The brew is often mixed with cheap chemicals to increase potency and profit.

District magistrate Naraya Swarup Nigam said that many of the victims – including labourers, street hawkers and rickshaw drivers – had gathered along a road near a railway station after work to drink the alcohol, which they bought for ten rupees for half a litre, less than a third the price of legal alcohol.

They later began vomiting, suffered headaches and frothed at the mouth, he said.

Angry villagers later ransacked booze shops in the area.

Police said they arrested ten people in connection with making and distributing the booze, which was tainted with methanol, and demolished ten illicit drinking dens in the area. They are searching for the operation’s kingpin, who has fled.

Alcohol for drinking contains ethanol, whereas highly toxic methanol – which can be used as fuel, solvent or antifreeze – can induce comas and cause blindness and is deadly in high doses.

Arman Seikh, 23, rushed his brother-in-law to the hospital.

“He complained of burning chest and severe stomach pain last night,” he said.

Anwar Hassan Mullah took six people to hospital, but all of them died, he told the NDTV news channel. He blamed police for turning a blind eye to the bootleggers.

“It’s a very sad thing that this has happened,” Mr Mullah said. “Why don’t the police stop this? I cannot understand.”

By last night, the death toll had risen to 143, said Surajit Kar Purkayaspha, a senior West Bengal police officer. About 100 people were also being treated in hospitals, he said.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee ordered an inquiry, and called for a meeting of the state’s major political parties to address the problem, promising 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, along with action.”

Despite religious and cultural taboos against drinking among Indians, about 5 per cent of the population – roughly 60 million people – are alcoholics. Two-thirds of the alcohol consumed in the country is illegal home-made brew or undocumented liquor smuggled in, according to medical journal The Lancet.

The state of Gujarat, where all liquor is banned, recently approved the death penalty as a punishment for making, transporting or selling drink that kills people. The measures were proposed after 157 people died in the city of Ahmedabad in 2009.