AT least 17 people including two students have died after drinking liquor in Dhaka and Bogura district over the last four days. More than two hundred people are sick and admitted to hospitals across the country after having poisonous liquor from homoeopathic halls in many districts. As the price and availability of quality liquor are hard to reach by middle-income people, vested quarters are selling rectified spirit as liquor to people. After multiple deaths occurred in the space of a week from liquor poisoning, the question arises, why so many people died or fell sick sick after having liquor? Police have started cracking down on factories manufacturing pure ethanol laced alcohol and busted an illegal factory.
During the Corona pandemic period, the Department of Narcotics Control (DNC) served notice to close liquor bars and shops. Though the liquor outlets have opened for two months, but there remains a crisis still in the market due to prolonged closure of such outlets. People collect adulterated liquor from fraudsters in the name of different brands for celebrating various festivals and programmes. In fact, wine is made with ethyl alcohol, but some vested quarters make alcohol illegally having no expertise in the trade. So they made adulterated alcohol mixed with methyl or spirits. The fraudsters add sugar, colour with spirit to produce the spurious alcohol and those are later sold as foreign brand alcohol in lucrative bottles.
Law restricts import, sale and consumption of liquor here in the country. But in reality there is no short supply of alcohol in bars and clubs as the illegal liquor market booms. The absurdly high tax on liquor, as much as 605 per cent, does not achieve any government target in banning illegal use of alcohol. The Narcotics Department should tighten the monitoring of illegal liquor production and consumption, while physicians and social leaders should work to aware people on the impact of liquor consumption.
We have a government which is not performing adequately. So there is no control and crimes soaring.
