WB hooch tragedy toll touches 118

The death toll from Wednesday's hooch tragedy in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district touched 118 on Thursday as more people died after having consumed spurious liquor, officials said.

Some TV reports put the toll at 123.

"About 150 people are admitted to a number hospitals under serious condition," South 24 Parganas district magistrate N S Nigam told IBNS.

He said those who were in a position to be shifted were taken to National Medical College and Hospital and MR Bangur Hospital.

On Thursday more deaths occurred in the hospitals in Kolkata where the victims were shifted.

In Bangur hospital alone, 18 died Thursday morning.

"It is a tragic situation," Nigam said.

The opposition Left Front has alleged that lack of infrastructure in the district hospitals led to rising deaths while the sick were transferred to Kolkata hospitals rather late.

Among the dead were mostly labourers, rickshaw-pullers from 10 villages in Mograhat and Sangrampur, that fall under the Usthi police station, around 40 km from Kolkata.

A district health officer said methanol, a poisonous substance, had been found in the viscera of many of the victims, who had drank the hooch, popularly known as chepti.

A medical team has been sent to the area and the critically sick people were being treated in a hospital in Diamond Harbour.

The patients had symptoms of severe stomach ache, vomiting, body pains and dysentery.

Local people alleged spurious liquor business was going on in collusion with a section of the policemen.

Many of them vandalised a liquor making unit at Mograhat and demolished at least 10 joints from where it was being sold at Sangrampur.

The police is looking for Illiyas Ali alias Badshah and Bakkar, two persons identified as bootleggers running the illegal liquor trade in the region.

A CID inquiry has been ordered by the state government.

The state government has announced Rs 2 lakh as compensation to the families of the dead.

At least four bootleggers were arrested though the purported kingpin of the liquor ring was yet to be caught.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee said, "Consumption of illicit liquor is a social disease and this has to be eradicated."

"I want help from everybody and let's not politicise the issue. I have asked Subratada (public health engineering minister Subrata Mukherjee) to call an all-party meeting," she said.