Villages of the Banda-Shahgarh area of Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh, India have now lost fifteen people who drank spurious liquor there, with the toll climbing again on Tuesday, September 8 after two more victims died during treatment. 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 first deaths came on the night of Saturday, September 5, 2026, and the count has risen every day since. Local media put the unofficial count as high as 22.

Those who drank on Saturday night fell ill soon afterward, complaining of nausea, vomiting and blurred vision, and were rushed for treatment. Deaths began that same night. By Sunday, September 6, 11 had died; the figure moved to 12 on Monday morning and to 13 that afternoon, when one more patient died. District Collector Pratibha Pal said all those who died were men between 30 and 50.

Why the Counts Do Not Match

Three sets of figures are in circulation, and they are counting different things at different hours. The Press Trust of India carried the district administration’s 13 on Monday. Counting deaths in treatment across all four hospitals, The Free Press Journal reported 19 deaths and 109 people under care by Monday afternoon. The unofficial toll came to 22 in The Deccan Chronicle, which noted 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.

The death counts are less firm than the hospital counts. Roughly 96 people were still being treated on Monday, seven of them critical, and two dozen had been discharged earlier that day. The Free Press Journal’s higher tally spread the patients out: 85 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. A patient in critical condition 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 were discharged that day, she said.

Sujania had given an earlier police account on Sunday morning. Villagers had been taken to hospital as a group, and of them five were declared dead and six were in serious condition. That snapshot held only to Sunday morning and has been overtaken. Spurious liquor is the term used in India for illicit or adulterated alcohol sold outside the licensed supply chain.

Methanol Suspected but 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. Methanol rather than ethanol may have laced the liquor, a senior doctor treating the patients told the Press Trust of India, noting that methanol causes blurred vision and that most of those who came in, including those who died, complained of it. Chief medical and health officer Devesh Pateriya was more cautious still: the symptoms could indicate methyl alcohol poisoning, he said, but this had not been confirmed.

Poisoning was suspected in the deaths, Sujania said, and the exact cause would be known once post-mortem reports arrived. Viscera and liquor samples have gone to a forensic laboratory for chemical analysis.

A Warning That Went Nowhere

Someone had warned the authorities first, and that is what drives the political row. A licensed liquor contractor took a complaint to the excise department 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, where the assistant excise commissioner on September 6 ordered shops to seal and seize their stock and send samples to a laboratory for testing.

Bottles were confiscated from a local outlet by excise officials who went to the affected villages. Six shops in the area have been sealed. On September 7, the district excise officer in Lalitpur, across the state line in Uttar Pradesh, issued an official statement: “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

Complaints from victims’ families produced three separate cases naming 30 people as accused, and police have arrested 14 of them. Licensed contractors Siddharth Kushwaha and Yashwant Thakur were named in the complaint, 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 has been removed from the district and attached to headquarters in Gwalior.

Pal has also ordered a magisterial inquiry, handing it to the sub-divisional magistrate of Jaisi Nagar. The criminal investigation, the excise seizures and the forensic testing all run alongside it.

Chief Minister Orders an Immediate Inquiry

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav was in New Delhi when the deaths were reported. He 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.

The spurious liquor was consumed in Nauraj and Gugra Khurd, in Shahgarh tehsil, and in Bamura, in Banda tehsil, Pal said, adding 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 kilometers from the district headquarters.

Five of the deaths have occurred in Gugra Khurd village, among them two brothers and a cousin. Villagers there said as of September 8 that 30 people from the village remain hospitalized.

An Appeal to Anyone Who Drank

The administration has appealed to anyone who drank the liquor and is showing symptoms such as vomiting, headache, fever or blurred vision to get checked immediately at the nearest health center as a precaution. 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, for its part, has announced no ex-gratia payment. Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla said strict action would be taken against officials found negligent.

Leader of Opposition Umang Singhar alleged on Monday, September 7: “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.”

Sagar district sits about 182 kilometers northeast of the state capital, Bhopal. The civil hospital at Banda serves its rural blocks, as do 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 saw the toll reach 13, and three men were later arrested on suspicion of supplying methanol.

The forensic and viscera results are still outstanding. Both the criminal investigation and the magisterial inquiry are continuing, and officials have not said the toll is final.