Officials disclosed to reporters on Thursday that not less than 34 people have died with over 100 hospitalised after consuming toxic bootleg alcohol in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said, as reported by the Press Trust of India news agency, that the deadly mix of locally brewed arrack drink was laced with poisonous methanol.
According to a statement from Stalin’s office, He said arrests had been made over the deaths and warned that such crimes “ruin society and will be suppressed with an iron fist.”
Authorities have also suspended a senior police official and ten members of the state’s prohibition enforcement wing – which oversees the smuggling of illicit alcohol in the state – for negligence, the BBC reported.
Hundreds of people die every year in India from cheap alcohol made in backstreet distilleries.
To increase its potency Bootleggers often add methanol – a highly toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an anti-freeze – to their mixture.
If ingested in even small quantities, methanol can cause blindness, liver damage, and death.
In the Tamil Nadu case, more than 100 people were hospitalised according to a top government official in the state’s Kallakurichi district, M.S. Prasanth, quoted by Indian media.
