Sagar hooch deaths: officials confirm 15, a minister lists 19, police hold 16

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav went to Sagar on Wednesday after a spurious-liquor outbreak that the district has officially put at 15 dead and that a state minister has put at 19. Local reports have spoken of 28 deaths. Those higher figures have not been adopted by Collector Pratibha Pal, who said 15 deaths were confirmed, eight patients were in critical care and 45 people with milder symptoms were under observation.

Police have arrested 16 of 33 people named in the case. Three excise officers and two policemen have been suspended. A magisterial inquiry ordered by Pal is to examine the sequence, the people responsible and the steps needed to stop a repeat. Congress has accused the government of suppressing the toll. Rahul Gandhi called for an impartial probe and for responsibility to be fixed where negligence or collusion is shown.

The first deaths that alerted police were ordinary village purchases. In Nauraj, 25-year-old Rajendra Lodhi bought a quarter of liquor sold as "Bambaiya" for Rs 70 after being told it was not fake. Investigators say a new cheap brand had been offered through licensed contractors named by police as Yashwant Singh, Manish Lodhi and Ashish Sahu of Banda. Rajendra Lodhi, Kartar Singh Lodhi, 30, and Digvijay Lodhi, 28, died. One accused later died in treatment.

In Gugra Khurd, five people died, including three men from one family. Villagers told PTI that Ujiyar Singh and Bhagwan Singh Lodhi had come home from factory work in Indore for Raksha Bandhan, gone to a party and drunk with friends. About 30 people from that village were still in hospital when those accounts were recorded. The patient rush at Sagar district hospital eased after the Saturday-Sunday surge in the Banda area.

Police say they contacted the distilleries that make the genuine brands whose names appeared on the bottles. Batch numbers matched clean production. The working theory is counterfeit liquor packed under those labels and sold below the legal price, a saving of about Rs 20 a quarter in the accounts collected by The Indian Express. Officers seized more than 252.12 litres in cases at Banda and Vinayaka police stations. Interrogation has focused on a supply line that police say reaches a Lalitpur-based operation in Uttar Pradesh and on the alleged role of Manish Lodhi, also called Yashwant Thakur, a licensed contractor at the Barethi shop and a resident of Banda.

Minister Prahlad Singh Patel said families of the 19 people on his list would receive aid. Dependents of workers registered under the Sambal scheme are to get Rs 4 lakh. Other workers' families are to be paid from the chief minister's discretionary fund. The gap between 15, 19 and the unofficial 28 is now a political fact as well as a counting problem. Post-mortems have been done on the official dead. Screening teams have been through the affected villages. The administration has told anyone with vomiting, headache or fever after drinking to go to hospital.

Hooch deaths in India follow a pattern that Sagar now fits. A cheap bottle, a familiar label, a licensed shop or a known seller, and methanol or a crude spirit that the drinker cannot see. The Rs 20 saving is the price that moved the first three men in Nauraj. The licensed-contractor names in the police file are the reason the opposition is talking about collusion rather than only about illicit stills in a field.

Yadav said the administration has a free hand. That sentence will be tested by the magisterial report, by the remaining 17 accused still outside custody, and by whether the hospital count stays at 15. Until the inquiry publishes, the district has three numbers and one supply chain that police say they can already describe.