Sagar hooch deaths reach 13 on the official roll as methanol tests begin

Officials in Sagar district put the death toll from spurious liquor at 13 on the night of 7 September, with 96 people under treatment in four hospitals and seven listed as critical. Collector Pratibha Pal said the dead were men aged between 30 and 50. Other Indian outlets the same day printed higher unofficial counts of 19 and 22. Congress leader Jitu Patwari claimed 50 deaths. The state government rejected that figure. Pal said post-mortems pointed to poisoning and that viscera had been sent for tests.

People fell ill after drinking on the night of 4-5 September in villages under Banda and Shahgarh tehsils, about 30 kilometres from Sagar town. Named places include Naoraj, Gugra Khurd, Bamura, Ghooghar and Baraj. Symptoms were blurred vision and dizziness, the usual first signs when methanol is in the drink. Health Minister Rajendra Shukla, who holds charge of the district, told Aaj Tak that a large quantity of methanol had been found in the bodies of the dead.

Among the dead is Harnam Rai, BJP mandal general secretary for Bara mandal in the Bunda Assembly segment. Shukla visited his house in Chauka. A published list of 19 names also includes Shyama Bai Ahirwar, 50, the only woman on that roll, and a father and son, Govind Lodhi and Ram Prasad Lodhi. Ram Prasad's brother Bhurre Lodhi was still in hospital. Official and unofficial lists do not yet match. That gap is common in the first 72 hours of a hooch case, when families report deaths that have not passed through the district hospital register.

Police registered three FIRs naming 30 accused, including licensed shop operators and contractors. Fourteen had been arrested by 7 September. Investigators are looking at a supply line from Lalitpur in Uttar Pradesh. Five officials were suspended. The collector ordered a magisterial inquiry by the sub-divisional magistrate of Jaisi Nagar.

Of patients counted in one hospital breakdown, 89 were at Bundelkhand Medical College in Sagar, 16 at the district hospital and seven at Banda civil hospital. One patient was flown to Bhopal. Methanol is an industrial alcohol. It is not used in licensed potable spirits. A small dose can blind. A larger dose kills. That is why hooch cases produce delayed deaths after the first night, as organs fail in hospital. The official toll of 13 is therefore a floor until the viscera reports and the remaining critical patients declare themselves.

Madhya Pradesh has seen this sequence before: cheap liquor, a village cluster, a rising official tally that lags the unofficial one, arrests of small sellers, and a hunt for the mixer who added methanol. Licensed shops appearing in the FIRs matter because they sit inside the state's legal chain, not outside it. If contractors and licensed outlets are in the dock, the case is about leakage from the legal market as much as about a jungle still.

The facts that will settle this file are the lab reports on the viscera and on seized stock, and whether the Lalitpur lead produces the people who made the batch. Until those results arrive, Sagar has a hospital ward, a list of names that will not stay still, and a district administration that has already chosen a magistrate to write the first official story of how the drink was made.