Patna: Bihar’s prohibition policy is not responsible for HOOCH’s death in the state, ban, excise and registration department minister Sunil Kumar said on Monday.
Overcoming Presser, the minister clarified that even before the implementation of Bihar and Excise prohibitions, 2016, there had been a Hooch tragedy in Bihar and other countries.
“The manufacturing, sale and consumption of prohibited liquor and the resulting deaths regularly comes from other states where the prohibition is not applied,” Kumar said.
The opposition parties and some of the ruling leaders of Nda Alliance in this country criticized the prohibition policy of the state government following several deaths due to consumption of liquor in advice, Nalanda and Buxar district recently.
Quoting the mortality rate related to Hooch at Bihar before the ban on liquor, Kumar said 21 people died in Bhojpur in 2012-13, 12 in style and 6 in advice in the same year, 18 in Gopalganj between 2000-2007, four in Kaimur in 2009 and 33 in Kesar in 1998.
Likewise, he said, the Hooch tragedy claimed 112 lives in Punjab in 2020, 99 in 2019 and around 345 in Karnataka in 2008, 102 in Maharashtra in 2015, 32 in Bengal in 2011, 32 In Odisha in 2012 and 157 in Assam in 2019.
Kumar said the department analysis strongly suggested that manufacturing and consumption of illegal liquor related to economic reasons.
“Those who are involved in the business of illegal liquor and people who buy especially from the economically weaker society,” said Minister, added that there were reports that people died after consuming liquor from licensed stores too.
“Liquor is not the only problem as a fake drug and other edible items that find the way to the market are equally dangerous,” he said.
Kumar said Cm Nith Kumar himself reviewed the implementation of legal prohibition regularly.
Reacting to police allegations was in gloves with liquor smugglers, Kumar said the government to maintain a vigil to them and 225 police had been suspended and accused of excise officials was also taken to the task.
Speaking of Hooch’s death in Nalanda, Buxar and advice, the minister said the department’s senior officer had visited these places.
“We have formed a team to find out the supply source of the Spirit for the making of the forbidden liquor,” Kumar said.