Methyl alcohol suspected as Sagar hooch deaths pass 11

At least 11 people died in Madhya Pradesh's Sagar district after drinking illicit liquor on Saturday night, and the count was still moving on Sunday afternoon. Local Hindi reports put the figure at 12. About 25 to 35 people were in hospital. Doctors at Bundelkhand Medical College and the district hospital described bluish skin and muscle stiffness, signs consistent with methanol poisoning.

Collector Pratibha Pal said the first calls reached the administration around 4:30 a.m. The affected hamlets sit under Banda police station and the Banda Assembly seat. She named Nauroja and Dogra. Other accounts added Baraj, Ghooghar, Gugarakhurd, Patan, Diluna, Bamura and Hinauti. Chief Medical and Health Officer Devesh Pateria said medical teams had been sent into three villages for door-to-door checks.

Pal told reporters that the postmortems completed so far pointed to methyl alcohol. She said a supply gang based in Lalitpur, across the Uttar Pradesh border, had surfaced in the first round of questioning. Superintendent of Police Anurag Sujaniya said 10 to 12 suspects were in custody and that Lalitpur had produced similar consignments before.

Shops sealed, officers suspended

The administration sealed licensed shops in Barethi, Banda, Shahgarh, Magardha, Dalpatpur and Baraitha and sent samples for testing. The state government suspended three excise officials and attached one other officer to the line. Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said he had told the minister in charge and the district officers to act at once and that the government would not tolerate the trade.

Congress attacked the state government for failing to stop a repeat of last month's deaths in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, where 13 people died after drinking spurious liquor. In Sagar the political argument will wait on the chemical reports. Methanol is cheap, easy to move in small vehicles and lethal in small doses. It is used in industrial solvents. When it is poured into bottles that look like country liquor, the first hours decide who lives.

A border trade

India Today cited a May 2026 FIR in Lalitpur against a group accused of moving illegal liquor into Madhya Pradesh with fake QR codes on bottles, using cars and motorcycles. Villages named in that file overlap with Sunday's list: Bandri, Barodia, Ghooghara Khurd, Naoraj and Baraj. If the two cases join, Sagar is not a single-night accident. It is a route.

Names released locally included Golu, also called Chaman Lodhi, 45, of Gugarakhurd; Digvijay Lodhi, 28; Kartar Singh Lodhi, 30; Ujyar Singh Lodhi, 56; and Roshan Lodhi. Former MLA Tarwar Singh Lodhi went to the hospital. The clustering of surnames reflects the villages, not a single household.

The next numbers that matter are the lab results on the seized stock, the condition of the four patients described as critical, and whether Lalitpur police hand over the people Sagar wants. Until those three arrive, the official death toll should be treated as a floor.