BHUBANESWAR/CUTTACK: The ‘killer alcohol’ continued to strike as body count shot up to 31 on Wednesday with Khurda district’s Bhingarpur and Cuttack’s Sadar area turning out to be the epicentre of the tragedy. As many as 43 more persons were hospitalised in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar after consuming what was an alcohol-based digestive manufactured by a City-based pharmaceutical lab. Even as the State Government ordered a judicial probe, Commissionerate Police sealed off Eastern India Pharmaceutical Laboratory which manufactured the digestive and took into custody its two owners and a manager. In Bhingarpur area, three medicine retailers were arrested by the police whereas the Excise officials held three liquor vendors. The sleuths were conducting raids to trace rest of the drug that the firm manufactured. Most of the deceased were working in brick kilns and residing at villages either under Cuttack Sadar or Balianta, which are contiguous. Twelve of them belonged to Cuttack, seven to Khurda, six from Ganjam and two hailed from Balangir districts. One of them was Baidhar Bhoi, who sold the solution to others at Mahigharpada and consumed it himself. His wife and son are being quizzed. Preliminary investigation revealed that the victims consumed the digestive called ‘Epeecarm’ and hours later started complaining of uneasiness and hallucination. All the deaths were reported at SCB Medical, Cuttack. Of the 41 hospitalised, two are at Bhubaneswar’s Capital Hospital. Police which swung into action on Wednesday morning recovered bottles of ‘Epeecarm’ from the houses of the victims at Bhinagrpur area and traced the manufacturer to Rasulgarh Industrial Estate. Similarly, another solution ‘Cinnamon’ was found from victims of Cuttack Sadar which too was manufactured by Eastern Indian Lab. “Preliminary investigation reveals that the victims consumed excess of the digestive solution which caused the death. What we are trying to ascertain is if the solution was interpolated and interfered with before being consumed. There are possibilities that the manufacturing process may not have been genuine,” said Police Commissioner BK Sharma, who inspected the raid and quizzed the promoters himself in the afternoon.While police asserted that no country liquor was prepared or consumed by the victims, they are trying to track the rest of the solution which is suspected to have claimed the lives. Eastern India Pharmaceutical Laboratory had produced 6,365 units of the digestive solution on January 30 and sold it to various retailers in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur and Balangir. Sharma said, the unit run by UK Rath and his son SN Rath and daughter-in-law Manasi Rath, had procured 1,000 litres of rectified spirit from Shakti Sugar in January to manufacture the digestive solutions. While ‘Epeecarm’ had 42 per cent alcohol content, ‘Cinnamon’ had 52 per cent. A team led by Bhubaneswar DCP Nitinjit Singh is interrogating the Rath family to track down rest of the batches of the solution so that more casualties could be prevented.
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