The incident took place at Doulatapur-Tihidi in Bhadrak district, about 150 km northeast of Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha.
“So far eight deaths have taken place and bodies have been sent for post-mortem,” an official with local health department in Bhadrak, Rajat Kumar Sahoo told Xinhua.
“Apart from this, a total of 101 patients were admitted in the hospital after they complained of nausea, stomach ache and loss of eyesight.”
Locals said the people consumed toxic liquor in a “post-election feast”.
“The tragedy struck late Monday night, a few hours after polling for the fourth and final phase of simultaneous parliamentary and local elections in the state was over,” Srikant Tripathy, a local resident said.
Local media reports said the victims had bought the liquor with the money provided to them by political parties.
Authorities have ordered a probe into the incident to ascertain the cause of deaths and the circumstances that led to the tragedy.
Medical teams have been rushed to the district to treat the victims.
“A joint investigation is being conducted by revenue, health, excise and police departments,” a senior local govt official said. “Complete details will be available only after samples collected from the area are tested and post-mortem reports of the deceased are available.”
The incident triggered protests from villagers who took to roads on Tuesday and blocked the Bhadrak-Chandabali road at Pirahaat, disrupting traffic.
The protesters demanded punishment on the culprits, locals said.
Meanwhile, rights activists in Bhubaneswar have moved a petition with India’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) seeking its intervention on recurring hooch tragedy in Odisha.
“The loss of precious human lives in Bhadrak district due to alleged consumption of spurious liquor is a matter of deep concern and it’s criminal negligence on part of the government authorities in launching crackdown on bootleggers, that has led to recurring hooch tragedies in Odisha,” said Dhirendra Panda, coordinator of the Civil Society Forum on Human Rights (CSFHR) in the state.
In February this year hooch tragedy in India’s northeastern state of Assam claimed over 150 lives, mostly of tea garden workers at an estate. Prior to that, around 100 people died in a hooch tragedy in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Spurious alcohol deaths are often reported in India, where people often drink cheap country made bootleg liquor.
In December 2011, hooch tragedy killed 172 people in South 24-Parganas district of West Bengal.
