Kallakurichi hooch tragedy: fermented with methanol and apathy Premium

Kallakurichi hooch tragedy: Hooch tragedy in Karunapuram claims 54 lives, exposes illicit liquor nexus, and sparks anger against authorities.

An eerie silence has engulfed the grubby and narrow lanes of Karunapuram situated behind government offices and the Combined Court buildings in Kallakurichi town.

The silence, time and again, gets punctuated by the whining sirens of ambulances, making their way into the locality followed by bouts of piercing wails renting the air.

Karunapuram village has plunged into collective grief. Almost every family in there has lost either a breadwinner or a relative or a friend to spurious liquor even as the the death toll continues to rise in one of the worst-ever hooch tragedies in Tamil Nadu in the recent past.

The death toll has reached 54 while 142 others are battling for their lives in hospitals.

The deaths occurred after the residents of Karunapuram, mostly Dalits and others from socially and economically disadvantaged groups, who are daily wage labourers and loaders consumed methanol-infused hooch from a local bootlegger Govindaraj, alias Kannukutty, on the night of June 18.

Most of the victims who succumbed on the interim night between Tuesday and Friday were from Karunapuram.

As many as 30 persons died at the Government Kallakurichi Medical College Hospital, 17 at the Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital in Salem, four at the Government Villupuram Medical College Hospital and three at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (Jipmer) in Puducherry.