Friday, April 4, 2025

Dry Mizoram continues to be dogged by hooch deaths

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Aizawl: Mizoram has been dry since February 20, 1997 with the powerful Church holding that Prohibition in the state has been a success, while boot-legging continues to thrive claiming 66 lives in the past 15 years. The hooch deaths in the state are mainly caused by deliberate mixing of methyl spirits and varnish while brewing a local liquor called Zu.

Dr Lalrozama, head of the department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology at the Civil Hospital here says that methyl spirits, a majority of them used in house construction and for polishing furniture, makes the local liquor deadly.

“The spirits are mixed with liquor while fermenting or afterwards to make the liquor stronger and make it more profitable for bootleggers,” Dr Lalrozama says.

Another unique technique in Mizoram is the use of a kind of yeast called BEDC or simply BE made in Myanmar. BEDC, a reddish powder, is mixed with a specified quantity of water for 24 hours which could then be easily mistaken as Indian-made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), Lalhlupuia, a journalist at Champhai town on the Mizoram-Myanmar border explains.

He says that simple villagers sometimes mistake BEDC as a magic potion that could transform water mixed with it into alcohol.

Official sources say that among the 66 victims of hooch, around 40 died due to consumption of liquor mixed with methyl alcohol or spirits, while liquor combined with BEDC and pain-killer drugs killed two each.

Dr Lalrozama says that that some bootleggers mixed pain-killers with the liquor during or after fermentation which made it deadly. A social worker also says that due to Prohibition being in place, liquor makers fermented it in the jungle under extremely unhygienic conditions which has its own hazards.

Meanwhile, the powerful Church continues to hold that Prohibition in the state has been a success and the contentions of anti-prohibition elements are not to be taken seriously.

The last meeting of the state prohibition council, in which Church leaders are also prominent members, failed to take any decision except to wait for the final reports and recommendations of the Study Group on Prohibition constituted by the state government.

The Study Group, formed to undertake in-depth study of the impact of Prohibition in the state, including the advantages and disadvantages of imposition of the dry law recently asked for more time and was granted till March 31, 2012 for submission of its recommendations. (PTI)

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