No fewer than 34 people have died with over 100 hospitalised after consuming toxic bootleg alcohol in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, officials told reporters on Thursday.
The deadly mix of locally brewed arrack drink was laced with poisonous methanol, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said, as reported by the Press Trust of India news agency.
Stalin said arrests had been made over the deaths and warned that such crimes “ruin society and will be suppressed with an iron fist,” according to a statement from his office.
Authorities have also suspended a senior police official and ten members of the state’s prohibition enforcement wing – which oversees the smuggling of illicit alcohol in the state – for negligence, the BBC reported.
Hundreds of people die every year in India from cheap alcohol made in backstreet distilleries.
To increase its potency Bootleggers often add methanol – a highly toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an anti-freeze – to their mixture.
If ingested in even small quantities, methanol can cause blindness, liver damage, and death.
In the Tamil Nadu case, more than 100 people were hospitalised according to a top government official in the state’s Kallakurichi district, M.S. Prasanth, quoted by Indian media.
Tamil Nadu is not a dry state, but liquor traded on the black market comes at a lower price than alcohol sold legally.
Selling and consuming liquor is prohibited in several other parts of India, further driving the thriving black market for potent and sometimes lethal backstreet moonshine.