By AFPMore by this AuthorGUWAHATINinety-three workers have died and at least 200 others have been hospitalised in northeastern India after drinking toxic liquor, officials said Saturday, in the latest case of alcohol poisoning in the country. The deaths in Assam state came less than two weeks after tainted liquor killed about 100 people in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that state authorities had collated "at least 80" deaths in the districts. Cheap, locally made liquor is common in parts of rural India and bootleggers often add methanol, a highly toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an anti-freeze, to their product to increase its strength. Hundreds of mainly poor people die each year in the South Asian country from tainted liquor, which normally costs just a few US cents a bottle.

Source: Daily Nation February 23, 2019 12:22 UTC