Spurious liquor has now killed 18 people in villages in the Banda-Shahgarh area of Sagar district, Madhya Pradesh, India, and the state has handed the case to a retired High Court judge. The deaths began on the night of Saturday, September 5, 2026, and the toll has risen almost daily since.
The most recent victim was Ajay Lodhi, 30, a panchayat secretary who died at Bundelkhand Medical College in Sagar. Thirty-two people were still under treatment as of Friday; more than 80 have recovered and gone home, several of them after time on ventilators.
The villagers had been drinking on Saturday night and sickened soon after, with nausea, vomiting and blurred vision, before being rushed for treatment. The first deaths came that night. By Sunday, September 6, 11 had died; the count stood at 13 by Monday afternoon and 15 by Tuesday.
“The condition of all the patients admitted to hospitals is continuously improving. So far, 15 people have died in this incident. We are talking to people and conducting awareness programmes in the area,” District Collector Pratibha Pal said on September 9, before the toll rose again.
Why the Numbers Do Not Match
Competing counts have circulated throughout because they measure different things at different hours. Counting deaths in treatment across all four hospitals, The Free Press Journal reported 19 deaths and 109 people under care on September 7, when the administration was still saying 13. The Deccan Chronicle carried an unofficial toll of 22 the same week. Jitu Patwari, the state Congress president, has claimed more than 50, saying families cremated bodies quietly under pressure; Mallikarjun Kharge cited 31 on September 10. No official source supports either figure.
The hospital counts have been firmer than the death counts. At the peak, The Free Press Journal put 85 patients at Bundelkhand Medical College, 12 of them in intensive care, with 17 at the Sagar District Hospital and seven at the civil hospital at Banda. One patient in critical condition was airlifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhopal. Spurious liquor is the term used in India for illicit or adulterated alcohol sold outside the licensed supply chain.
Methanol Suspected, Not Confirmed
A week on, no laboratory has confirmed what was in the bottles. Officials have hedged carefully throughout. “The post mortem of the deceased point to suspected poisoning. We have sent the viscera for testing,” Pal said. Post-mortem examinations were reported as early as September 6 to have found methyl alcohol, but that is a finding at autopsy rather than a forensic result, and samples of viscera and liquor sent to a state laboratory have not come back.
A senior doctor treating the patients told the Press Trust of India that the liquor may have been laced with methanol instead of ethanol, and said methanol causes blurred vision — a complaint from most of those brought in, including those who died. Devesh Pateria, the chief medical and health officer, was more cautious still, saying the symptoms could indicate methyl alcohol poisoning but that this had not been confirmed. Officials said fomepizole, the antidote used in cases of suspected toxic alcohol poisoning, had by September 9 helped save more than 30 people.
A Warning That Went Nowhere
What is driving the political row is that the authorities were told first. A licensed liquor contractor complained to the excise department about a counterfeit brand being sold locally as Bombay Whisky — rendered elsewhere as Bambaiya or Mumbaiya Whisky — and it is alleged that no effective action followed. An excise department report dated September 5, the day the deaths began, declared the brand standard grade and fit for consumption.
Two first information reports have been registered, split by brand: one at Banda police station over the counterfeit whisky, one at Vinayaka police station over Sagar Gold, the brand the victims are said to have actually drunk. Thirty people are named across them.
Sagar Gold was briefly banned in neighboring Jabalpur district on September 6, when the assistant excise commissioner there, Sanjeev Kumar Dubey, ordered shops to seal and seize their stock. He amended the order within hours, and the Commercial Tax Department then served him a show-cause notice for banning a brand without a chemical test, giving him 15 days to reply.
An Encounter, and a Judge
Police arrested the man they describe as the main accused, Ravi Lakhera, 45, early on Friday, September 11, in the Baraytha forest. He fired at officers and was shot in the leg, according to police, and was taken to a hospital in neighboring Uttar Pradesh; two men on the motorcycle with him escaped. Lakhera is alleged to have manufactured the liquor with a licensed contractor, Manish Lodhi, and moved it through peddlers, and police say he has around 25 criminal cases against him across several states. Seventeen of the 30 named have now been arrested; the case record lists one of the accused among the dead.
The state moved against its own officials first. The assistant excise commissioner for Sagar, an additional district excise officer and a sub-inspector were suspended, along with the Banda station house officer and an outpost in-charge; the local subdivisional magistrate and subdivisional police officer were removed, and a new divisional commissioner and inspector general were installed.
On Saturday, September 12, the government formally constituted a single-member commission of inquiry under a retired High Court judge, Justice Vishnu Pratap Singh Chauhan. Seated at Sagar and given three months to report, it is mandated to examine the conduct of the excise and police officials who were warned and did not act. Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, who ordered the probe after visiting Sagar, said the administration had been given a free hand and that charges carrying life imprisonment and the death penalty were being pressed.
No compensation has been announced. Umang Singhar, the leader of the opposition, has demanded 2.5 million rupees for each bereaved family and a government job.