Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are as common in Kenya as they are in India because the poor cannot afford licensed brands. Hundreds of poor people die every year in India due to alcohol poisoning, mostly from consuming cheap alcohol. Officials confirmed that at least 99 people have died and many reportedly hospitalised in northern India after drinking toxic alcohol, police and media say, in the worst such case in years thus triggering a crackdown against bootleggers.
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, illegally and locally-made liquor known locally as “hooch” or “country liquor”, are a regular occurrence in India, where many cannot afford branded spirits.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.
Police spokesman Shailendra Kumar Sharma confirmed that in one district of Uttar Pradesh 59 people had died after consuming toxic alcohol. Umar said the victims consumed liquor during a customary feast.
In a neighbouring 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 neighbouring 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.
According to the International Spirits and Wine Association of India, of the estimated 5 billion litres of alcohol drunk every year in India, around 40 per cent is illegally produced. In 2015, more than 100 people died in a Mumbai slum after drinking illegal moonshine.