One more ‘hooch’ death in Bihar's Samastipur

PATNA: In a fresh incident of suspected hooch death, spurious liquor allegedly claimed the life of a 19-year-old youth at Narghoghi Khairwan village under the Sarairanjan police station area of Samastipur district on Friday morning. Earlier, six persons had died after consuming poisonous liquor in different villages under the Patori police station area in the district this month.
The deceased, Chandan Kumar, used to work in Mumbai and had reached home to celebrate Chhath with his family. Police denied anything related to spurious liquor consumption but followed all the SOPs laid down for cases of deaths related to hooch poisoning.
At least 63 persons have reportedly died from hooch poisoning in Gopalganj, West Champaran, Samastipur and Muzaffarpur since Diwali eve. Overall 116 persons have died in the ‘dry’ state after consuming poisonous liquor this year. The series of hooch deaths followed by statewide crackdown against liquor smuggling were the main issue at the weekly review meeting held by senior police officers at the state police headquarters on Friday.
Sarairanjan police station SHO Raja Kumar said the postmortem of Chandan’s body was conducted at the Sadar hospital. “The viscera samples have been preserved for further forensic analysis to know if poisonous hooch consumption was the reason behind his death,” he said.
The SHO said police recorded his family’s statement in which they denied that Chandan had consumed any bad thing. “However, there were murmurings in the village over his death due to which a postmortem was conducted,” he said.
He said the family members had rushed him to the Dalsinghsarai sub-divisional hospital on Thursday after he fell ill but brought him back home on Friday morning, after which he died.
When asked, the SHO could not tell what kind of health complications Chandan developed all of a sudden due to which he was rushed to the hospital.
However, sources said Chandan’s family members had initially told the villagers that he had gone somewhere with his friends for a party and fell ill on his return.