At least 13 people have died and about 96 remain in hospital after drinking spurious liquor in villages of the Banda-Shahgarh area of Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh, India, the district administration said, in a toll that has climbed every day since the first deaths on the night of Saturday, September 5, 2026. Local media put the unofficial count as high as 22.
Villagers drank on Saturday night and fell ill soon afterward, complaining of nausea, vomiting and blurred vision before they were rushed for treatment. The first deaths came that night. Eleven people had died by Sunday, September 6; the figure reached 12 on Monday morning and 13 on Monday afternoon, when one more patient died. All those who died were men between 30 and 50, District Collector Pratibha Pal said.
Why the Numbers Do Not Match
Three sets of figures are in circulation, and they are counting different things at different hours. The 13 is the district administration’s number, carried by the Press Trust of India on Monday. The Free Press Journal, counting deaths in treatment across all four hospitals, reported 19 deaths and 109 people under care by Monday afternoon. The Deccan Chronicle put the unofficial toll at 22 while noting that “the official death figure however is put at 12.” The state Congress president, Jitu Patwari, has claimed 50, a figure no official source supports.
The hospital counts are firmer than the death counts. Of roughly 96 people still being treated on Monday, seven were critical, and two dozen had been discharged earlier that day. The Free Press Journal’s higher tally distributed patients across Bundelkhand Medical College in Sagar, which held 85 including 12 in intensive care, the Sagar District Hospital with 17, and the civil hospital at Banda with seven. One critically ill patient was airlifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhopal.
An earlier police account, given by Superintendent of Police Anurag Sujania on Sunday morning, described a group of villagers taken to hospital of whom five were declared dead and six were in serious condition. That snapshot was accurate to Sunday morning and has been overtaken. In India, the term spurious liquor is used for illicit or adulterated alcohol sold outside the licensed supply chain.
Methanol Suspected, Not Confirmed
Officials have been careful to hedge on the cause. “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 told the Press Trust of India that the liquor may have been laced with methanol instead of ethanol, noting that methanol causes blurred vision and that most of those who came in, including those who died, complained of it. Devesh Pateriya, the chief medical and health officer, put it more cautiously still, saying the symptoms could indicate methyl alcohol poisoning but that this had not been confirmed.
Sujania said poisoning was suspected as the reason for the deaths but that the exact cause would be known once the post-mortem reports were received. Viscera and liquor samples have gone to a forensic laboratory for chemical analysis.
A Complaint That Went Nowhere
The detail driving the political row is that someone had warned the authorities first. A licensed liquor contractor had complained to the excise department about a counterfeit brand being sold locally as Bombay Whisky, and it is alleged that no effective action followed. The brand the victims are said to have actually drunk, Sagar Gold, has since been banned outright in neighbouring Jabalpur district, where the assistant excise commissioner ordered shops to seal and seize their stock and send samples for laboratory testing on September 6.
Excise officials went to the affected villages and confiscated bottles from a local outlet. Six shops in the area have been sealed. Preliminary investigation indicates the liquor was supplied from Lalitpur, across the state line in Uttar Pradesh, and officials are examining a suspected link between people there and the local contractor.
Arrests and Suspensions
Police have arrested 14 people of the 30 named as accused across three separate cases registered on complaints from victims’ families. Three excise officials and two police personnel have been suspended, and a divisional flying squad officer has been removed from the district and attached to headquarters in Gwalior.
Pal has ordered a magisterial inquiry, assigning it to the sub-divisional magistrate of Jaisi Nagar. It runs alongside the criminal investigation, the excise seizures and the forensic testing.
Chief Minister Orders Immediate Inquiry
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, who was in New Delhi when the deaths were reported, called the matter sensitive and said he had directed the minister in charge of Sagar district and the concerned officials to investigate immediately and take strict action against those responsible. In a separate rendering carried by a second agency, he said his government would not tolerate such incidents.
Pal said the deaths followed the consumption of spurious liquor in Nauraj and Gugra Khurd, in Shahgarh tehsil, and Bamura, in Banda tehsil, and that officials had visited the bereaved families and taken stock of the treatment being given. Early agency copy also named the villages of Baraj and Ghughar. The affected settlements lie about 30 kilometres from the district headquarters.
Warning to Anyone Who Drank
The administration has urged anybody who drank the liquor and is showing symptoms such as vomiting, headache, fever or blurred vision to go at once to the nearest health centre for a precautionary check. Medical teams have been going door to door in the affected villages to identify patients, Pateriya said, and the appeal has reached well beyond any single hamlet: the sick have been arriving from several villages across the block.
A Political Row and No Compensation Yet
The opposition has called the deaths a consequence of administrative failure rather than an accident, and has demanded 25 lakh rupees for each bereaved family. The leader of the opposition in the state assembly announced 50,000 rupees to bereaved families during a visit of his own. The state government has announced no ex-gratia payment. Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla said strict action would be taken against officials found negligent.
Sagar district sits about 182 kilometres northeast of the state capital, Bhopal. Its rural blocks are served by the civil hospital at Banda and by the district hospital and Bundelkhand Medical College in the district headquarters town, the facilities where patients were treated and referred over the weekend.
Deaths from illicit alcohol recur across Indian states. In a separate case in Bhavnagar district in Gujarat in August, the toll reached 13, and three men were later arrested on suspicion of supplying methanol.
The forensic and viscera results are outstanding, the criminal investigation and the magisterial inquiry are both continuing, and officials have not said the toll is final.
