India toxic alcohol toll rises to 57

BBC:

The number of people who have died since consuming toxic bootleg alcohol last week in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has risen to 57, authorities say.

Several residents in the state’s Kallakuruchi district were admitted to hospital on 18 June after they fell ill from consuming poisonous liquor.

Around 156 people are still being treated for illnesses such as excessive diarrhoea.

Five people have been arrested so far and a wider investigation is underway.

Dozens of people die in India each year after drinking bootleg alcohol from backstreet distilleries.

Bootleggers often add methanol – a highly toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an anti-freeze – to their mixture to increase its strength.

If ingested in even small quantities, methanol can cause blindness, liver damage and death.

In Kallakuruchi, most of those who consumed the bootleg alcohol were daily wage workers.

The accused allegedly sold the concoction in packets through a local vendor, according to The NewsMinute website.

People who consumed the alcohol experienced symptoms like dizziness, headaches, vomiting, nausea, stomach pain and eye irritation and were taken to hospital.

Murugan, one of the survivors, told BBC Tamil that he usually bought four to six packets of alcohol every day.

On 17 June, he stumbled as he walked back home after drinking a few packets.

“I could not do anything even though I felt that I was in a different state than usual,” he said. “My son carried me inside the house and put me to bed.”

His family rushed him to the hospital after he started vomiting the next morning.