Duplicity Over Hooch Deaths !

 BY R.K.MISRA

Celebrate endings- for they precede new beginnings, goes a saying. 

And as the old year yields place to the new ,hopes surface that  India’s lawmakers will  spare time to pause and ponder at the plummeting levels of public discourse and the crass contradictions  that mark their conduct.

The contradictions are most noticeable in the matter of the spurious liquor tragedy in Saran district of Bihar in December where over 80 people lost their lives. Both Houses of the Bihar legislature were adjourned indefinitely ahead of schedule following the BJP opposition’s backlash over the hooch deaths and the demand for a review of the prohibition policy in the state. Taking Suo moto cognizance, the National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) issued notice to the Bihar government. The NHRC also underlined the failure of the State government to implement its policy of prohibition of sale and consumption of illicit liquor in Bihar since 2016. Soon after a 9-member NHRC team landed up to take stock of the situation inviting strong objections from the state government  which called it wholly unjustified and beyond the aims and objectives of the Commission.

However when a similar liquor tragedy took place in BJP ruled Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana the party and NHRC approach was wholly different. Opposition parties in a statement issued in Delhi charged the Modi government with double standards pointing out that there had been over 200 hooch deaths during 2016 and 2021 when the JD(U)-BJP government had been in power in Bihar but the NHRC never felt the need to investigate such incidents. In Uttar Pradesh  36 people had died after consuming spurious liquor in Aligarh in May 2021 and 40 in Haryana’s Panipat and Sonipat districts after consuming adulterated liquor in November 2020,14 people in the Ujjain hooch tragedy in October 2020 and 24 people in similar fatalities in Morena district, Madhya Pradesh in January 2021.

There has been liquor Prohibition in Gujarat since the inception of the state in 1960 and its consumption or possession is an offence. Nevertheless  the state has witnessed numerous spurious liquor deaths over the years.

In July last year, just five months before the Bihar tragedy, 42 people had died and another 50 were  hospitalised after consuming illicit or toxic liquor in Gujarat’s Botad district . The home department of the Bhupendrabhai Patel government  set up a three- member investigating team which  spoke of collusion between some lower level cops and bootleggers, and reiterated a set of dos and donts, six  cops including two  deputy superintendents of police were suspended while the district police chiefs of  Botad and Ahmedabad rural were transferred and that was the end of the story. Earlier a similar hooch tragedy in Surat in 2016 led to the death of 21 people. Chief minister Vijay Rupani set up a three-man panel headed by a top cop to probe the deaths and little was heard in the public domain thereafter.

Earlier in July, 2009,over a 150 people fell to the killer brew in Ahmedabad while the Vidhan Sabha was in session. Moving fast into damage control mode, chief minister Narendra Modi, announced a further tightening of prohibition laws and amended the Bombay Prohibition  Act to provide for death sentences for those found guilty of manufacturing and selling spurious liquor called “lattha”(hooch) in 2009.The Bill received the Governor’s assent  in December 2011 but to date there has not been a single case  where  the culprit has received the death penalty though liquor tragedies have been taking place even thereafter.

The Narendra Modi government had also set up a one- man Judicial inquiry commission  headed by Mr Justice K.M. Mehta to probe the tragedy . Justice Mehta was surprised when he learnt that  the state government did not have regulations for transportation of methyl alcohol, which was  the root cause of the tragedy. He had termed it as a ridiculous situation.

Justice Mehta  noted that methyl alcohol had been  responsible for  all the spurious liquor tragedies that have taken place in Gujarat over the years and yet even after the 2009 Ahmedabad  liquor deaths no rules had been framed for its transportation ,even by the time the matter came up before the Commission.

Successive inquiry commissions set up after every major liquor tragedy have drawn attention to this anomaly and yet it remained unattended. Following the 1989 hooch tragedy in Vadodara in 1989 in which 132 people died and 200 were affected, the Justice A.A. Dave Inquiry Commission set up to probe it,  had strongly recommended that either the government should abolish prohibition or make suitable and stringent changes in the policy to tighten it.

 Justice(retd) N.M. Miabhoy inquiry commission which probed the 1977 Ahmedabad hooch tragedy in which 100 people lost their lives and over 200 were badly affected had observed that the prohibition policy in Gujarat was a failure and that sweeping changes were necessary for its effective implementation. One of the main reasons he attributed for its  failure was the rampant corruption in the police force. Nothing has changed even now.

Justice Dave’s words seem prophetic in hindsight. ”It will be meaningless to believe that people of the next generation will not fall victim to this menace due to the implementation of the prohibition policy. For the last 40 years, people have not only continued to consume liquor ,but their number has also increased. Anyway, if the prohibition policy is scrapped, it will not only help reduce the (prohibition related) cases of corruption but also the  funds  the government spends on its implementation, could be utilized on the welfare of the poor labour class. Hence it is requested that the government review the prohibition policy(in toto)”, he  said .

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