At least 42 people have died in western India and nearly 100 others have been hospitalized after drinking toxic alcohol, police said Thursday, with authorities ordering a crackdown on bootleggers.
Dozens of people fell ill earlier this week after drinking methanol – a toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an antifreeze – which was sold in several villages in Gujarat state.
Senior Police Officer Ashok Yadav told AFP that 31 people have died in Botad district since then.
Another 11 people died in the nearby Ahmedabad district, V Chandrasekar, another senior police official, told AFP.
“Investigations revealed that the victims had consumed industrial-grade methanol, which led to the deaths,” state Interior Minister Harsh Sanghavi said in a statement.
Sanghavi said 97 people had been taken to hospital for treatment, two of them in critical condition.
Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is one of several states in India where the consumption and sale of liquor is illegal.
Authorities have cracked down on illegal liquor stores across Gujarat and have arrested several people, state police chief Ashish Bhatia said on Wednesday.
Hundreds of people die every year in India from cheap alcohol made in backyard distilleries.
Of the estimated five billion liters of alcohol the country drinks each year, about 40 percent is produced illegally, according to the International Spirits and Wine Association of India.
Methanol is often added to the liquor to increase its potency. If ingested, methanol can cause blindness, liver damage, and death.
Last year, 98 people died after drinking illegal alcohol in the northern state of Punjab.
And in 2019, a similar incident in northeast Assam state killed more than 150 people, most of them tea plantation workers.
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