Hooch Tragedy: Assam To Trace Poison in Liquor, Develop Kits

GUWAHATI: Rattled by the recent hooch tragedy that claimed more than 150 lives in the upper Assam tea garden areas, the State Excise department has written to the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, to develop portable alcohol-testing kits.

The Excise department has requested the NCL to develop a low-cost user-friendly kit to test the various components particularly poisonous ones such as methanol or volatile acids in liquor. Once the kit is developed, the department will distribute those among its field officials, police, district offices and liquor shops across the State. The kit will also be made easily purchasable in the market so that people can buy and check their alcohol in their houses.

The kits will be used by the Excise field officers and polices who are assigned to keep tabs on liquor outlets that are found in hundreds across villages and tea gardens in the State.

“Ethanol, the spirit used in alcohol, has the propensity to turn into methanol, a deadly spirit that once consumed beyond a quantity of 10ml, can turn fatal due to the illegal catalysts that go into the making of hooch and country liquor, often during fermentation. Those who lost their lives and became seriously ill in the tea gardens areas in Golaghat and Jorhat districts are believed to have fallen prey to higher quantities of methanol present in the country liquor or sulai that they had consumed,” a source in the Excise department told The Sentinel.

Country liquor or sulai has traditionally been consumed across Assam especially in tea gardens and remote areas. The Excise department is not yet fully equipped to identify and measure the exact quantities of ingredients used in such alcohol.

A team of two chemists from NCL recently visited the existing ill-equipped laboratory at Bamunimaidum in the city here and shouldered the responsibility to develop the testing kits for Assam.

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