Chandigarh: Six dead in Haryana after consuming spurious liquor

Chandigarh : Six people have died in Haryana’s Yamunanagar district over the last two days in a suspected case of poisoning due to spurious liquor, police said on Wednesday.

They said investigations are still underway and some people have been rounded up for questioning but the exact cause of the deaths is yet to be ascertained.

“We received information on Wednesday afternoon from a hospital about the death of one person. It was stated to be a case of suspected spurious liquor death,” Yamunanagar Superintendent of Police (SP) Ganga Ram Punia told PTI over the phone late in the evening.

He said the exact cause of the death will be known after a post-mortem examination is conducted but police launched an investigation based on the information and enquired about the matter in nearby villages. During the probe, police got information from two villages in the district that three other people were cremated on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday. The police are also treating these five cases, along with the one informed by the hospital, as suspected spurious liquor poisoning incidents as they died under suspicious circumstances, the SP said.

The families of the other five deceased people cremated the bodies without informing the police and so, no post-mortem exams could be conducted, he added. To a question on where the deceased might have sourced the suspected hooch from, Punia said, “We are verifying things and the investigation is going on.”

“We have rounded up some suspects for questioning,” he added. Police said the deceased were from different age groups and are believed to have consumed the suspected spurious liquor on Tuesday night. While five of them were stated to have died after some time, one person died at the hospital on Wednesday, they said, adding two more were reported to be undergoing treatment at separate medical facilities. Another police official from the district said an FIR has been registered in the matter.