Fast friends and neighbours, electrician Shankar Dhangar (30) and rickshaw driver Vinayak Chandanshive (28) were regulars at a Vikhroli zopadpatti watering hole.
At Rs 16 a bottle, their poison, a bottle of hathbhati—liquor made of fermented oranges, sweet lime, black jaggery and assorted chemicals—came cheap at the one-room illicit liquor den.
But the Christmas celebrations at the adda, barely 100 meters from the Vikhroli (E) police chowky, proved costly for Dhangar and Chandanshive, among the 10 who died of the 40 poisoning victims in the Rajawadi Hospital.
All the victims come from slums and chawls bunched together at Vikroli East.
Monday’s morning’s incident comes less than a week after a similar spurious liqour tragedy that claimed 18 victims in Mahalakshmi.
Tagore Nagar slum—which lost two—blames the police. ‘‘Police negligence has led to the untimely demise of our resident..’’, reads a board in the lane outside Chandanshive’s home.
Residents like Shyam Wagh (name changed) point out that the liquor den at Indira Nagar was flourishing for nearly two decades.
‘‘Unko malum nahin kya? (Didn’t the police know about it?) In fact that was the only one cheap liquor den in the area and lots of people regularly frequented it’’ said Wagh.
Two stations away at Ghatkopar, at the Rajawadi male ward no 12, about 20 hooch victims lie under observation. They have escaped the fate of Dhangar and Chandanshive.
‘While people in this ward are not in critical condition, we are keeping them under observation. They are being treated for methanol poisoning,’’ said Dr V B Shukla, the medical superintendent at Rajawadi Hospital.
Patients like 24-year-old Baba Kamble have been here since Sunday, complaining of severe headache after consuming the illicit liqour.
The police have arrested Asha Kamble (45), wife of BMC sweeper Babu Kamble, from the Indira Nagar slums for selling illicit liquor to people in Vikhroli on Saturday.
PATIL ACTS
Furious at the second incident of hooch deaths in less than a week, Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil today suspended six police officers and transferred two deputy commissioners of police (DCPs).
DCPs Ashok Dongre (Zone VII) and Dilip Bhujbal (Zone III) will have to give up their charges. Two Assistant Commissioners, Two Senior Police Inspectors in charge of the concerned police stations and Sub Inspectors heading the concerned beats are to be suspended.
Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 50,000 to the kin of the victims in both incidents.