Two more victims died during treatment on Tuesday, September 8, pushing to 15 the number of people killed by spurious liquor in Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh, India, Sagar Superintendent of Police Anurag Sujania told PTI Videos. The first deaths came on the night of Saturday, September 5, 2026, in villages of the Banda-Shahgarh area, and the toll has climbed every day since. Unofficial counts in local media have run as high as 22.
Villagers who drank on Saturday night sickened soon afterward, complaining of nausea, vomiting and blurred vision before they were rushed for treatment. The earliest deaths came that same night. By Sunday, September 6, 11 people had died; the figure stood at 12 on Monday morning and reached 13 that afternoon, when one more patient died. District Collector Pratibha Pal said all of the dead were men between 30 and 50.
Why the Numbers Do Not Match
Several counts are circulating, and they measure different things at different hours. The 13 was the district administration’s number, carried by the Press Trust of India on Monday, before police put the toll at 15 on Tuesday. Counting deaths in treatment across all four hospitals, The Free Press Journal reported 19 deaths, with 109 people under care as of Monday afternoon. The Deccan Chronicle went higher, giving 22 as the unofficial toll while adding 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 tallies have held steadier than the death counts. Nearly 40 people remain hospitalized as of September 8, three of them in critical condition, an official said. In The Free Press Journal’s higher tally on Monday, Bundelkhand Medical College in Sagar held 85 patients, 12 of them in intensive care; the Sagar District Hospital had 17 and the civil hospital at Banda seven. One critically ill patient went by air to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhopal.
Sujania gave an earlier police account on Sunday morning: a group of villagers had been taken to hospital, five of them declared dead and six in serious condition. Events have since overtaken that snapshot, which was accurate to Sunday morning. Spurious liquor, in Indian usage, refers to illicit or adulterated alcohol sold outside the licensed supply chain.
Methanol Suspected, Not Confirmed
Officials have hedged carefully on what caused the deaths. “The post mortem of the deceased point to suspected poisoning. We have sent the viscera for testing,” Pal said. On September 8, Pal told reporters that post-mortems of all 13 deceased had been conducted, that four to five people are under critical-care monitoring and that health teams are still watching others for symptoms. Some patients have been discharged, she said, with more to follow after medical observation.
The liquor may have been laced with methanol instead of ethanol, a senior doctor treating the patients told the Press Trust of India, noting that methanol causes blurred vision — a symptom reported by most of those brought in, including those who died. Devesh Pateriya, the chief medical and health officer, 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, but the exact cause will be known only once the post-mortem reports are received. A forensic laboratory has the viscera and liquor samples for chemical analysis.
A Complaint That Went Nowhere
A warning had reached the authorities before anyone died, and that is the detail driving the political row. A licensed liquor contractor complained to the excise department that a counterfeit brand was being sold locally as Bombay Whisky; no effective action is alleged to have followed. Sagar Gold, the brand the victims are said to have actually drunk, has since been banned outright in neighboring Jabalpur district, where the assistant excise commissioner on September 6 ordered shops to seal and seize their stock and send samples for laboratory testing.
Excise officials went to the affected villages and confiscated bottles from a local outlet, and six shops in the area have been sealed. Preliminary investigation indicates that suppliers in Lalitpur, across the state line in Uttar Pradesh, provided the liquor; a suspected link between people there and the local contractor is now under examination by officials.
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, with a search on for the rest, Sujania said on September 8. One of the 15 dead, he said, is himself an accused in the bootlegging network. The complaint alleges around eight people were illegally selling liquor in the village and names licensed contractors Siddharth Kushwaha and Yashwant Thakur; cases were registered at Banda and Vinayaka police stations.
Suspensions have hit Three excise officials and two police personnel, while a divisional flying squad officer has been pulled out of the district and attached to headquarters in Gwalior. By September 8, authorities had also launched a campaign against illegal liquor traders and illicit alcohol sales.
Pal has ordered a magisterial inquiry, and the sub-divisional magistrate of Jaisi Nagar has been assigned to it. The criminal investigation, the excise seizures and the forensic testing all run alongside it.
Chief Minister Orders Immediate Inquiry
New Delhi was where Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav found himself when the deaths were reported. Terming the matter sensitive, he said the minister in charge of Sagar district and the concerned officials had been directed by him to investigate immediately and take strict action against those responsible. A second agency carried his remarks differently, with Yadav saying his government would not tolerate such incidents.
Consumption of spurious liquor in Nauraj and Gugra Khurd, in Shahgarh tehsil, and in Bamura, in Banda tehsil, preceded 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. The affected settlements lie about 30 kilometers from the district headquarters.
By September 8, five people had died in Gugra Khurd village, among them three men from the same family.
Warning to 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. Pateriya said medical teams have been going door to door in the affected villages to identify patients. The appeal has reached well beyond any single hamlet, and patients have been arriving from several villages across the block.
A Political Row and No Compensation Yet
Administrative failure, not accident, is how the opposition has cast the deaths, and it has demanded 25 lakh rupees for each bereaved family. On a visit of his own, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly announced 50,000 rupees to bereaved families. The state government has announced no ex-gratia payment. Officials found negligent will face strict action, Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla said.
Sagar district sits about 182 kilometers northeast of the state capital, Bhopal. Its rural blocks depend on the civil hospital at Banda and on the district hospital and Bundelkhand Medical College in the district headquarters town — the facilities that treated and referred patients over the weekend.
Deaths from illicit alcohol recur across Indian states. A separate case in Bhavnagar district in Gujarat in August reached a toll of 13, and three men were later arrested on suspicion of supplying methanol.
The viscera and forensic results have yet to come back, both the criminal investigation and the magisterial inquiry are continuing, and officials have not called the toll final.