Two more victims died during treatment on Tuesday, September 8, taking the number of dead to 15 in the spurious liquor tragedy in the Banda-Shahgarh area of Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh, India, where the first deaths came on the night of Saturday, September 5, 2026. Superintendent of Police Anurag Sujania told PTI Videos that 15 have died so far, one of them an accused in the bootlegging network. Nearly 40 people remain hospitalized, three of them critical. The count has climbed every day since that first night, and local media put the unofficial figure as high as 22.
The drinking took place on Saturday night. Villagers began falling ill soon afterward, with nausea, vomiting and blurred vision, and were rushed for treatment; the first of them died the same night. Eleven had died by Sunday, September 6, the figure reached 12 on Monday morning, and it rose to 13 that afternoon when another patient died. Every one of the dead was a man between 30 and 50, District Collector Pratibha Pal said.
Why the Counts Do Not Match
Three sets of figures have been circulating, each measuring different things at different hours. The district administration’s number was the 13 carried by the Press Trust of India on Monday. The Free Press Journal counted deaths in treatment across all four hospitals and reported 19 deaths, along with 109 people under care by Monday afternoon. An unofficial toll of 22 appeared in the Deccan Chronicle, which added that “the official death figure however is put at 12.” Jitu Patwari, the state Congress president, has claimed 50, a figure no official source supports.
Hospital numbers have held up better than the death counts. Roughly 96 people were still being treated on Monday, seven of them critical, with two dozen discharged earlier in the day. The Free Press Journal’s larger tally placed 85 patients at Bundelkhand Medical College in Sagar, 12 of them in intensive care, 17 at the Sagar District Hospital and seven at the civil hospital at Banda. One critically ill patient was airlifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhopal.
Pal told reporters on Monday, September 7, that postmortems of all 13 deceased had been conducted and that four to five people were under critical care monitoring. Many of those screened had been discharged that day, she said.
Sujania had given an earlier account on Sunday morning: villagers were taken to hospital, and doctors declared five of them dead while six were in serious condition. Accurate to that morning, the snapshot has since been overtaken. In India, the term spurious liquor is used for illicit or adulterated alcohol sold outside the licensed supply chain.
Methanol Suspected but Not Confirmed
On the cause, officials have hedged carefully. “The post mortem of the deceased point to suspected poisoning. We have sent the viscera for testing,” Pal said. A senior doctor treating the patients suggested to the Press Trust of India that methanol rather than ethanol may have been used to lace the liquor, and noted that methanol causes blurred vision and that most of those who came in, including those who died, complained of it. The chief medical and health officer, Devesh Pateriya, was more cautious still, saying the symptoms could indicate methyl alcohol poisoning but that this had not been confirmed.
Poisoning is suspected as the reason for the deaths, Sujania said, though investigators will know the exact cause only once the post-mortem reports are received. A forensic laboratory has received viscera and liquor samples for chemical analysis.
A Warning That Went Nowhere
What is driving the political row is that the authorities had been warned first. The excise department had received a complaint from a licensed liquor contractor about a counterfeit brand being sold locally as Bombay Whisky, and it is alleged that no effective action followed. Sagar Gold, the brand the victims are said to have actually drunk, has since been banned outright in neighboring Jabalpur district. There, the assistant excise commissioner ordered shops to seal and seize their stock and send samples for laboratory testing on September 6.
Excise officials traveled to the affected villages and confiscated bottles from a local outlet, and six shops in the area have been sealed. Investigators are also examining a suspected link between people in Lalitpur, across the state line in Uttar Pradesh, and the local contractor. On September 7, the Lalitpur (UP) district excise officer said in an official statement that “The Sagar district police in MP has made misleading claims before the media about Lalitpur connection to the spurious liquor tragedy,” adding, “Nowhere in Lalitpur district is illicit liquor being manufactured.”
Arrests and Suspensions
Thirty people have been named as accused across three separate cases registered on complaints from victims’ families, and police have arrested 14 people among them. The complaint named licensed contractors Siddharth Kushwaha and Yashwant Thakur, and cases were registered at Banda and Vinayaka police stations. Officials said a campaign has been launched against illegal liquor traders. Suspensions have hit three excise officials and two police personnel, while a divisional flying squad officer was removed from the district and attached to headquarters in Gwalior.
Pal has also ordered a magisterial inquiry and assigned it to the sub-divisional magistrate of Jaisi Nagar. That inquiry proceeds alongside the criminal investigation, the excise seizures and the forensic testing.
Chief Minister Orders an Immediate Inquiry
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav was in New Delhi when the deaths were reported. Describing the matter as sensitive, he said his instructions had gone to the minister in charge of Sagar district and the concerned officials to investigate immediately and take strict action against those responsible. A second agency carried a separate rendering in which he said his government would not tolerate such incidents.
Villagers in Nauraj and Gugra Khurd, in Shahgarh tehsil, and in Bamura, in Banda tehsil, had consumed spurious liquor before the deaths, Pal said, adding that officials had visited the bereaved families and taken stock of the treatment being given. Baraj and Ghughar were also named in early agency copy. About 30 kilometers separate the affected settlements from the district headquarters.
Five of the deaths have occurred in Gugra Khurd village, among them two brothers and a cousin. Villagers there say 30 residents of the village remain hospitalized as of September 8.
Advice for Anyone Who Drank
Anyone who drank the liquor and is showing symptoms such as vomiting, headache, fever or blurred vision should go at once to the nearest health center for a precautionary check, the administration has urged. Medical teams have been going door to door in the affected villages to identify patients, Pateriya said. The appeal has reached far beyond any single hamlet, with the sick arriving from several villages across the block.
A Political Row With No Compensation Yet
Rather than an accident, the opposition has called the deaths a consequence of administrative failure, and it has demanded 25 lakh rupees for each bereaved family. Umang Singhar, leader of the opposition in the state assembly, made a visit of his own and announced 50,000 rupees to bereaved families, and on Monday, September 7, he alleged: “The brands whose liquor was consumed by those who died later are all manufactured in MP, including the Sagar Gold brand, which is manufactured at the distillery of a politically powerful family of Banda (Sagar).”
Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, demanding homicide arrests, said, “The Excise Department, the Police Department, and BJP leaders–all three are culpable.” No ex-gratia payment has been announced by the state government. Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla said strict action would be taken against officials found negligent.
About 182 kilometers northeast of the state capital, Bhopal, the civil hospital at Banda serves Sagar district’s rural blocks, as do the district hospital and Bundelkhand Medical College in the district headquarters town — the facilities where patients were treated and referred over the weekend.
Illicit alcohol kills again and again in Indian states. A separate case in Bhavnagar district in Gujarat in August left a toll of 13, and three men were later arrested on suspicion of supplying methanol.
The forensic and viscera results have yet to come back, the criminal investigation and the magisterial inquiry are both continuing, and officials have not said the toll is final.
