More than 50 people died collapsing in the street or arriving at hospital after consuming adulterated alcohol

Bodies of people who died after drinking adulterated alcohol in Calcutta, India, on December 15, 2011. MAXPPP – TUMPA MONDAL

Some 53 people have died and more than a hundred have been hospitalized after drinking adulterated alcohol sold on the black market in a small town in the far south of India, according to a latest report published Sunday, Indian media reported.

An AFP photographer who went to the site after the first wave of deaths witnessed a sky blackened almost everywhere by the countless plumes of smoke from the funeral pyres .

The leader of the state of Tamil Nadu where the tragedy took place, M.K. Stalin, specified that this alcohol, from arrack, a common drink in South and South Asia -East, had been mixed with methanol, and had killed 37 people in the first hours.

Some very quickly became blind, one of the effects of methanol, and were taken to the hospital, then many others began to collapse and died in the street, or even in arriving at the hospital, residents testified.

A local official in the Kallakurichi district told the Indian Express newspaper on Sunday that poor workers, mainly men who work on a daily basis, particularly in agriculture, regularly buy their arrack in plastic bags for 60 rupees (0.70 euros), and drink it before going to work to give themselves courage.

"Not treating yourself to official alcohol"

They buy this alcohol in the street "because they can’afford" that of official stores , explained to the newspaper a home help who lost her 60-year-old husband, who died Thursday from drinking this adulterated arrack.

Hundreds of people die every year in India from batches of toxic alcohol made in illegal distilleries.

Methanol is often added to these drinks to enhance their effects, which can lead to blindness, liver damage, or death. Alcohol is not banned in Tamil Nadu but that sold on the black market is cheaper than that sold legally.

"Men only work to drink and women take care of the family", lamented a rickshaw driver who lives on a street where 23 people died, on the Indian Express Shankar.

Another less severe resident quoted by the newspaper explains that despite everything, these daily workers "earned their family's bread. Now many families will struggle to make ends meet".

Authorities said seven people were arrested in the case. The sale and consumption of alcohol is prohibited in several other regions of India, favoring contraband alcohol factories.

Last year, 27 people died in the eastern state of Bihar due to a batch of adulterated alcohol, while in 2022, at least 42 people died in another incident in Gujarat (west).