One drink too many

Published March 3, 2014
Relatives of an unidentified person, who died after drinking toxic liquor, wail near his body, in Adampur village, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. — Photo by AP
Relatives of an unidentified person, who died after drinking toxic liquor, wail near his body, in Adampur village, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. — Photo by AP
Alcohol bottles getting smashed by the anti narcotics in Pakistan. — File Photo
Alcohol bottles getting smashed by the anti narcotics in Pakistan. — File Photo

On a hot day in early September, the wind stood still over Badli Sharif village in Rahimyar Khan district. As the oppressive noon drew to an equally oppressive afternoon, Abdul Shakoor thought the only way to kill the heat was to join his friend Dilshad Ahmed for a drink in the evening. Both men, in their early thirties, had taken to drinking together quite regularly to overcome, what their friends and relatives call the stress of the daily grind that life in the village is for most of its residents. Shakoor purchased half a litre of locally, and illegally, produced liquor from a local manufacturer, Siddique Araeen, and as the evening was setting he moved out of the village with Ahmed to their favourite haunt — a big tree on the edge of the sugarcane fields. A few drinks later, both were having a great time but then something went terribly wrong: A couple of hours after consuming the liquor both men lost their eyesight and felt their hearts sinking somewhere deep down in their bellies. Their families rushed them to a hospital in Rahimyar Khan city, about 25 kilometres away, but they died one after the other before receiving any treatment.

About 27 others in and around Badli Sharif died in the next few days, all due to the same reason: Consuming liquor. Having a drink is a common and accepted part of the local culture in this part of southern Punjab even though it is forbidden by law and religion. What was uncommon was the extraordinarily high number of deaths this caused in a matter of days. Almost everyone in the village immediately knew what had gone wrong: The liquor that was doing the rounds among the villagers was toxic.

The manufacturer, Araeen, was horrified. He had supplied about 100 litres of the same stuff to two local families, who had wedding celebrations planned in the coming days. What would happen if scores of guests at these weddings consume the toxic liquor? Shuddering at the thought, he rushed to both families who had purchased the liquor from him and told them to throw it away immediately; then, he went from door to door to all those whom he had supplied the booze to lately and advised them to dispose it off. The death toll in Badli Sharif in that fateful September week could have been much higher if it wasn’t for his frenzied efforts. For Araeen, this was a case of trying to serve his clients well having gone horribly wrong. The usual complaint the drinkers would have was that his stuff was not strong enough. Being a small manufacturer, he was also unable to keep up with the rising demand in his village and with two weddings about to take place there were more orders than ever before. As a quick fix, he contacted a bigger manufacturer, Shahbaz Korai, operating in a nearby village, Sonak. Even together, the two manufacturers thought that they would not have enough time to produce the 100 or so litres of liquor customers were asking for. But Korai had an idea, a deadly one. He procured ethanol from a sugar mill in the area and mixed it with water. The concoction was very strong, fatally strong, in fact. He thought this would simultaneously take care of both the problems — of liquor not being potent enough and catering to orders that he did not have sufficient time to cater to through other means. He passed off the mixture as liquor to Araeen who then supplied it to his customers.

Araeen could not know what actually was in the stuff he was peddling until it started claiming its victims. Tragedy, indeed, struck his own family too. His young son, Zulfiqar, was one of the consumers of the toxic mixture, though he is lucky to have survived. The substance, however, claimed his eyesight and he has gone completely blind. Married a couple of years ago, he laments the fact that he will never be able to see the face of his daughter, who was born after he went blind.

Araeen, Korai and two others responsible for producing and selling the deadly drink are in jail, being tried for multiple murders. The police say they could not collect a sample of the mixture for a laboratory test as all of it was either consumed or thrown away before the matter came to the notice of the local administration. But it is a known scientific fact that a mixture of water and ethanol contains as much as 89 per cent alcohol. Compared to this, most factory-brewed whiskies have 40 per cent alcohol content. It was, indeed, liquid fire in polythene bags.

For a village the size of Badli Sharif, the number of people who lost their lives in the incident in just a few days was almost equivalent to the local annual death rate due to natural reasons. This should have been tragic and shocking enough for the local community to do something about it. Not in Badli Sharif, though. Life in the village goes on as usual — more or less.

People continue to drink, even those who discontinued drinking for a while after falling seriously ill by consuming the ethanol mixture. It was only in the first two weeks after the deaths that nobody drank in the village, says Abdul Rasheed Chohan, who leads prayer in the main local mosque. After that, he says, “90 per cent of them have started drinking again”.

Abdul Rahim Dhodha, a local trucker, is one of them. He had been blind and down with serious stomach aches for four days after consuming a small amount of the toxic liquor. He could have suffered more had his polythene pouch of liquor not leaked, leaving him with much less than he had purchased. His friends say he has resumed drinking. The only change they see is that he no longer drinks publicly.

Others are living in denial. Many people don’t even admit that their close relatives died by consuming toxic liquor. Majid Ahmed, the younger son of Bashir Ahmed, a primary school teacher, denies that his father died after drinking the deadly substance. “My father had quit drinking years ago. He died of heart failure, not because he had consumed liquor,” he tells the Herald. Everyone else in the village says Majid Ahmed is lying to avoid being embarrassed. Bashir Ahmed was a well respected man in the area as a teacher, the villagers point out. The admission that he died due to drinking is seen by his family as sullying his reputation, they point out.

Such evasiveness has led to a vast gap in the number of deaths reported to the police and those known to the local residents. Sohail Zafar Chattha, the district police officer in Rahimyar Khan, says police have registered cases for seven deaths. Others in the local police say they have received information about 14 people having lost their lives. By all local accounts, however, the death toll was much higher. “We have lost 29 people, aged between 18 and 40 years, within just a few days, starting from September 7,” says Sufi Ghulam Hussain whose son-in-law, Dilshad Ahmed, was one of the first victims. Many families silently buried their dead, fearing that death by drinking may attract police attention (who usually use such incidents to mint money through bribes) as well as societal condemnation, he adds.

Even though Badli Sharif, a sizeable village of mostly small farmers and farm labourers, is a close-knit community and most of its people are related to each other, there have been no efforts at the local level to put an end to drinking, or at least to ensure that it does not lead to deaths. “Selling and drinking of liquor continues, as they have since decades,” says Husain. “The number of drinkers is, in fact, increasing,” he tells the Herald. Even those belonging to ostensibly pious families have started drinking, he adds.

Older people like Hussain lament that they can do nothing beyond telling people to avoid drinking and they know that such exhortations are being hardly affective. People should do something collectively so that those who have taken to drinking can be weaned off their habit and aspiring drinkers are discouraged from making it a habit for themselves, says Hussain. Others cannot care less, maybe also because they see cheap liquor as the only means for entertaining themselves. (A half-litre pouch of locally brewed liquor costs as little as 150 rupees whereas a bottle of whiskey manufactured by the Murree Brewery containing the same amount of drink may cost as much as 500 rupees).

Hussain has a strong personal reason for feeling the need for a community-level campaign against drinking. His son-in-law has left behind six young children, all now being brought up by Hussain. Ahmed’s own father lost his mind after his son’s death. He does not talk to anyone anymore, staring vacantly in the distance as if waiting for his dead son to come back. Ahmed’s elder brother, who has been mentally ill for years, has no one to take care of him.

All the 29 or so people who died due to ethanol consumption have, indeed, left behind widows, children and parents who do not have any dependable source of sustenance. The only support they get comes from their own close relatives who, invariably, have meagre means of income.

The local police have done nothing except arresting the manufacturers and suppliers of the deadly substance. A senior police officer in the district confides to the Herald that their priority is to curb crimes like robbery, theft and murder and not punish those who just want to have a good time. Having the freedom to drink may keep them away from getting involved in other crimes, he says. Though he insists that the police will not allow the sale and supply of the kind of toxic mixture that took so many lives in Badli Sharif, there is no way for them to even know if and when such a sale and supply take place.

Community elders, especially the local representatives of political parties, understand the risks but they say there is hardly anything that they can do. In private conversations, they also mention how going beyond a certain limit in reprimanding the drinkers and liquor manufacturers and suppliers, leave alone trying to name, shame and ostracise them, could be counterproductive for them, politically. This may lose them support in the village, where the manufacturers, drinkers and preachers are all related to each other.

Ismail Dahar, a local political activist, has a rather fatalistic explanation as to why people should be drinking unsafe substances, sometimes even at the cost of their own lives. “What else should these tormented souls do?” he asks. Lack of economic opportunities and the burden of rearing families on meagre means have made their lives miserable, says Dahar. “Drinking is their only refuge and cheap booze, their only drinking option.”

As Dahar speaks to the Herald on a mid-December day, his words echo through the dusty skies over Badli Sharif.

—By Moosa Kaleem

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