Post-mortem on 87 bodies after Aligarh hooch tragedy so far

Aligarh (UP): Post-mortems of 16 more suspected hooch victims were conducted here in the last two days, raising their number to 87, but authorities on Wednesday kept the official death toll in tragedy pegged at 35.

The authorities said the official death toll would be revised only after the viscera test reports confirm the cause of deaths of all those who are suspected of having died due to spurious liquor consumption.

Aligarh's Chief Medical Officer Dr Bhanu Pratap Kalyani had on Monday said 71 post-mortems had been conducted till then on suspected hooch victims.

After autopsies of 16 more people in the last two days, the number of people suspected of having died due to spurious liquor consumption has now risen to 87. District authorities, however, on Wednesday reiterated that the official death toll still stands at 35.

An official spokesperson said the remaining deaths would be included in the official tally only after viscera reports of victims are received from the designated government laboratory at Agra.

Amid the lack of clarity over the number of actual and official figures of death in the hooch tragedy, a Congress leader wrote to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath demanding the removal of doubts over the two counts.

The police, meanwhile, arrested one more person, the brother of the absconding illicit liquor trade kingpin, raising the number of those arrested after the spate of deaths in the hooch tragedy to 34.

Amid the rising deaths due to suspected consumption of spurious liquor, the district authorities on Wednesday asked all liquor vends to return their entire existing stock of country-made liquor to the Excise Department godowns for replacement.