Homemade liquor kills 28 in India

LUCKNOW, India -- A bad batch of bootleg liquor killed at least 28 people and sent 160 others to hospitals in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, officials said Tuesday.

Many of the victims were among more than 200 people who had gathered to watch a cricket match Sunday evening in a village about 30 kilometers (almost 20 miles) southwest of the state capital, Lucknow, government official Anil Garg said.

By midday Tuesday, 28 people had died, including 11 in another village farther southwest, police officer Mukul Goel said.

Doctors in Lucknow said that some of those hospitalized were in serious condition and relying on artificial ventilation, and that some had lost their eyesight.

Police arrested the shop owner who sold the 200-milliliter pouches of the homemade alcohol for about 30 cents each. A raid of the shop uncovered large containers of chemicals, which have been sent to a laboratory for testing, district official R.K. Pandey said.

"The symptoms gave a clear indication that these patients were served methyl alcohol," which despite being toxic is sometimes mixed with ethyl alcohol to make a brew cheaper, said Dr. Kausar Usman, head of the trauma center at Lucknow's King George's Medical College.

Deaths from drinking illegally brewed alcohol are common in India because the poor cannot afford licensed liquor.

Villager Rajesh Kumar, whose two older brothers became ill after drinking the unlicensed liquor on Monday, said the shop in Datli village was well known for selling inexpensive liquor, and that many men came from surrounding villages just to buy the booze.

The state's highest elected official, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, suspended six police officers suspected of taking bribes to ignore complaints against the shop and its alcohol and announced that a "drive will be launched against those involved in the illicit liquor trade."

Meanwhile, another case of tainted alcohol claimed more lives Tuesday in Mozambique, where three additional deaths brought the total toll to 72 after attendees at a funeral consumed a traditional brew which officials believe had been poisoned.

About 35 victims remained hospitalized, down from 196, according Paula Bernardo, director of health, women and social welfare in the northeastern Tete province. At least seven people were still in critical condition in hospitals in the Chitima district, Bernardo told Radio Mozambique.

Dozens of people fell ill in Chitima and in the neighboring Songo district after drinking traditional beer, known as Pombe, at a child's funeral over the weekend.

Police investigating the incident said the barrel in which the beer was originally brewed has since disappeared, hampering the investigation.

District health officials said Sunday that it was likely crocodile bile that poisoned the beer, a common practice in the region. The mother of the child whose funeral the victims were attending when they became ill brewed the beer, and was among the victims.