Police: Moonshine kills at least 102 in India
New Delhi (CNN) -- Authorities raided liquor vendors in eastern India Thursday, after at least 102 people died and more than 170 others were sickened from drinking moonshine, police said. At least 100 people were hospitalized.Apparently jobs are not the only thing we're outsourcing to India; it now appears we're sending over our hillbillies... It does beg the question: Are there mountain men from the Himilayas? I guess they can still do technical support while blind or something. Maybe they're just real fans of M*A*S*H in India?
Four people suspected of involvement in selling the illegally-brewed, cheap liquor in West Bengal state have been arrested, according to Officer M. Das. Authorities sealed off a factory believed to be making the illicit brew, District Chief Narayan Swamy Nigam said.
Now I've heard everything, though - runnin' shine outta New Delhi...
That is all.
15 comments:
Jay,
This is nothing new. Bootleg booze in India is 1/3 the price of the "official" or "legal" stuff. I recall some years ago a story about hundreds of wedding guests dead from bad booze used by the bartenders.
In related news from Canada via Foxnews, excessive drinking can lead to unsafe sexual practices. Who knew . . . sort of like the big stories about the sun rising in the east and water being wet.
- Brad
- Brad
Before my time, but I been told,
You could smell the whiskey burnin' down Taj Mahal Road...
Ole' Patel was busted the other day in his Mahindra runnin from the New Dehly revenuers. He hit the sacred cow.
And right about now, them Nahasapeenapetalon brothers was wishin' there were in a different county...
I call BS...if we were sending our hillbillies over there, the Indians would know how to make their 'shine RIGHT.
America may be on the ropes these days, but we still damn well know how to make fast cars, good booze and shootin' irons! :D
Wraith: You got that right. We don't send workers overseas, we send their jobs, to be done poorly.
Moonshine got a bad name during Prohibition when the mob was making and selling bathtub gin. They didn't care about quality because their customers didn't. (Those who did care got Canadian whisky smuggled across the border - at a commensurate price.) If a customer or three died of lead poisoning or went blind from methyl alcohol in their hooch, nobody could do anything about it.
The old hillbillies made moonshine for their own consumption, so they weren't about to cut corners.
I drank some 'shine while I was in Brazil. I was sick for 5 days. Probably because it was about 150 proof and tasted like candy, so I treated it like Coca-cola. I wasn't so much afraid that the hangover would kill me as I was afraid that I might live and continue to suffer.
Next time I'm bringing that stuff home.
I remember that happening when I was a kid living there - many years ago. They typically wind up making undrinkable Methanol - wood-alcohol - that results in death. Beyond palm-juice toddy them Hindus don't have much of a drinkin' tradition, they more like to smoke the Ganja.
BTW - the mountain-men in the Himalayas are called Ghurkas and Sherpas and they know how to make and still a brew that doesn't kill. The Nepalese drink like freakin' fish because the water up there is all contaminated by goat and cow poop.
Also it's 814 miles from Calcutta (West Bengal) to New Delhi, and culturally it's like going from Georgia (if you had a Communist-run Georgia...uh, like Atlanta...) to NewYawkCity...
Back in '59 Dad split his time between Ft. McClellan and Huntsville, Ala.
NASA work in Huntsville resulted in lots of stainless steel piping hitting the surplus market.
MUCH better for stills than copper.
I agree with Wraith. Our hillbillies here in the North Georgia mountains still make good stuff. They helped invent NASCAR too, and now we have moonshine tourism, of all things.
"Moonshine got a bad name during Prohibition when the mob was making and selling bathtub gin."
Dave H, the bootleggers actually figured out how to "renature" the industrial ethyl alcohol to make it drinkable. The Feds then mandated that methyl alcohol be put in during the denaturing process (which you can't get out IIRC) and that resulted in about 10,000 deaths.
I like your post and thanks for sharing it.
Wonder if they used old car radiators for the distilling bit. That's what gets a lot of the people in the US who succumb to bad moonshine - lazy amateurs who use old car parts in their stills. Or it was back when I was in the area (80s-90s).
Yeah, I went to college near the mountains in Georgia. Why you ask?
LittleRed1
Speaking of bootleggers, we just legalized, finally, Sunday package sales of booze here in Georgia.
I don't know who is more upset, the Baptists or the bootleggers. Yes, we actually had Sunday bootleggers here until now.
Genuine moonshine is still available, if you know the right people.
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