Gujarat hooch tragedy: The death toll due to the consumption of spurious liquor in Gujarat's Botad district has reached 40 with seven more people succumbing in the last 12 hours, a police official said on Wednesday.
Out of the deceased, 31 belonged to different villages in Botad and nine were natives of neighbouring Dhandhuka taluka in Ahmedabad district, the official of Botad police control room said.
Nearly 50 people were still admitted to hospitals in Bhavnagar, Botad and Ahmedabad, he said.
Meanwhile, an FIR was registered against nearly 20 culprits under the Indian Penal Code Sections 302 (murder), 328 (causing hurt by poison) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).
Ten of them have been arrested so far.
The Vadodara rural police on Wednesday nabbed Jatubha Rathod, one of the accused in an FIR registered by Barvala police in Botad and absconding since being booked, an official said.
The hooch tragedy had come to light early Monday morning when some people living in Rojid village of Botad and other surrounding villages were referred to government hospitals in the Barvala area and Botad towns with deteriorating health conditions.
Primary investigations by police have revealed that some small-time bootleggers of different villages of Botad district had made spurious liquor by mixing water with methyl alcohol or Methanol, a highly poisonous industrial solvent, and sold it to villagers for Rs 20 per pouch.
According to police, forensic analysis has established that the victims consumed methyl alcohol.
The Gujarat Home Department has formed a three-member committee, headed by senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Subhash Trivedi, to conduct a detailed inquiry into the incident and submit a report within three days, as per a government release.
A police investigation has revealed that a person named Jayesh aka Raju had stolen 600 litres of methyl alcohol from a godown in Ahmedabad where he worked as a manager and then sold it to his Botad-based cousin Sanjay for Rs 40,000 on July 25.
Despite knowing that it was an industrial solvent, Sanjay sold the chemical to bootleggers of different villages of Botad.
These bootleggers mixed water in the chemical and sold it to people as country-made liquor, police said.
Gujarat Hooch tragedy: AAP to protest in Delhi
Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party will hold a protest outside the BJP headquarters here on Wednesday against the Hooch tragedy in the saffron party-ruled Gujarat.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who met patients hospitalised after consuming spurious liquor on Tuesday, said prohibition exists only on paper in Gujarat, where 33 people have died so far after consuming spurious liquor, and alleged alcohol is being sold in the open and bootleggers are enjoying "political protection" in the state.
Kejriwal said similar hooch tragedies have taken place in the past too and they raise a huge question mark on the way the liquor prohibition law is being implemented in the BJP-ruled state.
"This is not the first incident. There have been several such incidents in the past. There is a big question mark on prohibition law which appears to exist only on paper," he said.
Kejriwal demanded compensation for family members of the deceased and those who are hospitalised.
(With inputs from PTI)
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