Eleven dead in Sagar after methyl alcohol, with the trail pointing to Lalitpur

At least eleven people died and 54 fell ill after drinking illicit liquor in villages of Banda tehsil in Madhya Pradesh's Sagar district. Sagar Range Deputy Inspector General Shashindra Chouhan gave those figures on Sunday evening. Three FIRs have been registered on complaints by relatives of the dead. Three excise officials and two police personnel have been suspended. About twelve people are in detention.

Collector Pratibha Pal said the first reports came around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday from Nauroja and Dogra, under Banda police station, about 30 kilometres from the district headquarters. Other accounts named Baraj and related hamlets in the same belt. People who drank on Saturday night developed nausea, vomiting, headache and, in many of the 54 patients, blurred vision and dizziness. The sick were taken to Bundelkhand Medical College and Hospital. Medical teams were sent into the affected villages for door-to-door screening.

Pal said early postmortem findings pointed to methyl alcohol. Superintendent of Police Anurag Sujaniya said the suspected source is a supply chain based in Lalitpur, across the border in Uttar Pradesh, a route that has appeared in earlier cases. "We have detained 10-12 people so far and are trying to establish a link through a systematic interrogation," he said. Excise staff seized bottles from a local vend for forensic tests. Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr Devesh Pateria said deaths were still being counted as the morning went on.

Local lists of the dead, reported by Patrika from the Banda assembly segment, included Golu alias Chaman Lodhi, 45, of Gugra Khurd; Digvijay, 28; Kartar Singh, 30; Ujyar Singh, 56; Roshan Lodhi, 30; Rajendra, 32; Harnam, 42; and others. Those names have not been issued as a single official roll. The state government attached one more official and promised action. Congress attacked the administration for failing to stop the trade.

Methyl alcohol, or methanol, is a cheap industrial solvent that bootleggers mix into liquor because it is available and strong. It damages the optic nerve and can shut down the system that keeps a person breathing. Blurred vision in 49 of the 54 patients is the clinical signature doctors look for in a hooch case. Screening in three villages is meant to find people who drank and have not yet collapsed.

Sagar sits on a long Bundelkhand corridor where cheap liquor crosses the UP-MP line. Lalitpur has been named before. Suspension of three excise officers and two policemen is the first administrative admission that the local check did not work. A magisterial inquiry has been ordered. The forensic result on the seized bottles will decide whether this is treated as a local vend failure or as a cross-border methanol run. Either way, eleven families in Banda tehsil are already past the point where a circular helps.

Hooch deaths return to the same districts because the legal shop is either too far, too dear, or closed when men want to drink. The supply from Lalitpur exists because that demand is stable. Closing one vend and suspending five uniforms will not change the price of methanol. It may still show whether the next truck is stopped before the next Saturday night.