Bootleg liquor kills 102 people in eastern India

A batch of bootleg liquor laced with toxic methanol killed 102 people and sickened dozens more who purchased the illegal brew at small shops in eastern India, officials said Thursday.

Police arrested seven suspected bootleggers.         

Illegal liquor operations flourish across the slums of urban India and among the rural poor who can't afford the more expensive alcohol at state-sanctioned shops. The hooch, often mixed with cheap chemicals, causes illness and death on occasion, but rarely creates such mass carnage.           

Day laborers and other poor workers began falling ill late Tuesday after drinking cheap booze from illegal shops near the village of Sangrampur, district magistrate Naraya Swarup Nigam said.            

Groups of men gathered after their shifts to drink along a road side near a railway station late Tuesday when they began vomiting, suffering piercing headaches and frothing at the mouth, Nigam said. Angry villagers later ransacked the booze shops.                       

Police arrested seven people in connection with making and distributing the methanol-laced booze, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said.            

Police officials said the spurious liquor was from an illegal distillery in the village of Mograhat that supplies 70 shops in the area. Police are searching for the kingpin of the operation, who has fled, they said.     

AP