The official death toll in the spurious liquor tragedy in the Banda-Shahgarh area of Sagar district in Madhya Pradesh, India, reached 16 on Thursday, September 10, 2026, after another man died in treatment. The first deaths came on the night of Saturday, September 5. Unofficial counts circulating in local media have run far higher, from 22 up to 31, and none of them can be reconciled with the government’s figure.
Villagers who drank on Saturday night fell ill soon afterward, complaining of nausea, vomiting and blurred vision before being rushed for treatment. The count stood at 11 by Sunday, September 6, reached 12 on Monday morning and rose to 13 that afternoon. District Collector Pratibha Pal described the dead as men between 30 and 50, but the names released as the toll climbed run wider than that. The first 11 identified ranged in age from 28 to 56, among them Golu alias Chaman Lodhi, 45; Digvijay Lodhi, 28, of Nauraj; Sumer Singh Dangi, 47, of Bamura; and Surendra Ahirwar, 35, of Lidhaura. Two more died on Monday, September 7: Mahesh Rawat, 55, of Dhurmar village, at the Banda civil hospital, and Shyam Bai Ahirwar, 50, of Chhapri village, at the Sagar District Hospital. No agency has named the 16th.
Why the Tolls Do Not Match
Several sets of figures are in circulation, each counting different things at different hours. The 13 was the district administration’s number on Monday, carried by the Press Trust of India. The Free Press Journal, counting deaths in treatment across all four hospitals, logged 19 deaths that same Monday afternoon, with 109 people under care and 12 in intensive care. The Deccan Chronicle placed the unofficial toll at 22 while noting that “the official death figure however is put at 12.” By Wednesday the unofficial tallies had reached 28 and 30. The state Congress president, Jitu Patwari, has claimed around 50, a figure no official source supports.
Hospital numbers have held firmer than the death counts, and they are falling. Pal said on Thursday that 32 people remained under treatment, one of them in serious condition, and that many had recovered and gone home. The Deccan Chronicle put the figure the same day at 46 still admitted to Bundelkhand Medical College, five of them critical. At the peak on Monday, Bundelkhand Medical College accounted for 85 patients, the Sagar District Hospital 17 and the civil hospital at Banda seven. One critically ill patient was airlifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Bhopal.
Pal told reporters on September 8 that post-mortems had been carried out on all 13 people then confirmed dead. Fomepizole, an antidote used in suspected toxic alcohol poisoning, has emerged as a key intervention, and officials said it had helped save the lives of more than 30 people.
Speaking on September 9, Pal said: “The condition of all the patients admitted to hospitals is continuously improving. So far, 15 people have died in this incident. We are talking to people and conducting awareness programmes in the area.”
Superintendent of Police Anurag Sujania gave an earlier police account on Sunday morning: hospital staff had received a group of villagers, five of whom were declared dead while six were in serious condition. Events have since overtaken that snapshot. Illicit or adulterated alcohol sold outside the licensed supply chain goes by the term spurious liquor in India.
Methanol Suspected but Not Confirmed
On the cause, officials have hedged carefully, and five days on no laboratory result has been made public. “The post mortem of the deceased point to suspected poisoning. We have sent the viscera for testing,” Pal said. The Press Trust of India was told by a senior doctor treating the patients that methanol rather than ethanol may have been used to lace the liquor; blurred vision is caused by methanol, the doctor noted, and most of those who came in, including those who died, complained of it. The chief medical and health officer, Devesh Pateria, was more cautious still, saying the symptoms could indicate methyl alcohol poisoning but that this had not been confirmed.
Poisoning was suspected as the reason for the deaths, Sujania said, though the exact cause would be known only after investigators had the post-mortem reports in hand. Viscera and liquor samples have gone to a forensic laboratory for chemical analysis.
The Warning That Went Nowhere
What is driving the political row is that the authorities had been warned first. The excise department received a complaint from a licensed liquor contractor that a counterfeit brand was 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, sold for 50 rupees a quarter bottle against 70 for the legitimate product. It was banned outright in neighboring Jabalpur district, where the assistant excise commissioner ordered shops on September 6 to seal and seize their stock and send samples for laboratory testing — an order for which that officer has since been asked to explain himself, having acted before any chemical test.
Excise officials who reached the affected villages confiscated bottles from a local outlet, and six shops in the area have been sealed. Police said on Thursday that they had located the illicit distillery. The liquor was supplied from Lalitpur, across the state line in Uttar Pradesh, preliminary investigation indicates, and officials are examining a suspected link between the local contractor and people there; Uttar Pradesh excise authorities have disputed the connection, saying the suspects are residents of Banda.
Arrests, Suspensions and Bulldozers
Sujania said on September 9: “Out of the 30 accused, 16 have been arrested and sent to jail. The search for the remaining accused is continuing.” A 17th was arrested the following day. Victims’ families lodged the complaints behind separate cases at the Banda and Vinayaka police stations, and rewards of 20,000 rupees have been posted on two of the accused still at large, with 10,000 rupees on two more.
Suspensions have hit three excise officials and two police personnel, and a divisional flying squad officer has been removed from the district and attached to headquarters in Gwalior. On Thursday the administration sent bulldozers into the affected area, demolishing five establishments belonging to three of the accused. “Government land has been freed from all these establishments,” Pal said. The state has also posted a new divisional commissioner and a new inspector general to Sagar.
Pal ordered a magisterial inquiry in the first days, assigning it to the sub-divisional magistrate of Jaisi Nagar. That has since been overtaken: on September 9 the chief minister ordered a judicial inquiry, to be conducted by a retired high court judge. Both run alongside the criminal investigation, the excise seizures and the forensic testing.
The Chief Minister in Sagar
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav called the matter sensitive when the deaths were first reported. “I have instructed the concerned minister and officials to visit the site immediately; we will take the strictest possible action and conduct an inquiry,” he said. “Our government will absolutely not tolerate such incidents.”
He travelled to Sagar himself on Wednesday, September 9, meeting patients at the district hospital. Action was being taken against the accused under provisions carrying life imprisonment and the death penalty, he said, and the administration had been given a free hand.
Officials had visited the bereaved families and taken stock of the treatment being given, Pal said, naming Nauraj and Gugra Khurd, in Shahgarh tehsil, and Bamura, in Banda tehsil, as the places where the spurious liquor was consumed. Patients later arrived from Patan and Chhapri as well. About 30 kilometers separate the affected settlements from the district headquarters.
A Door-to-Door Search for Patients
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. Pateria said medical teams had been moving door to door through the affected villages to identify patients. The appeal has reached well beyond any single hamlet, with the sick arriving from several villages across the block.
Compensation and a Political Row
Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla, who is also the health minister and the minister in charge of Sagar district, announced four lakh rupees for each bereaved family. “No negligence or laxity in the treatment of the victims will be tolerated,” he said. “All patients must receive the best possible treatment, and there should be no shortage of medicines or other resources.” The Congress has called the sum inadequate and wants 25 lakh rupees per family.
The opposition has blamed administrative failure rather than accident. “The Excise Department, the Police Department, and BJP leaders — all three are culpable,” said Digvijaya Singh, the senior Congress leader and former chief minister, who demanded arrests reaching the shop the liquor came from and the officials who let it happen. Umang Singhar, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly, announced 50,000 rupees to bereaved families during a visit of his own and pressed a narrower question about the Jabalpur ban: “Why was the order changed within a few hours? Under whose pressure was the order changed?”
Sagar district sits about 180 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 where patients were treated and referred over the weekend.
Deaths from illicit alcohol recur across Indian states. The Vartej area of Bhavnagar district in Gujarat saw a separate case in August in which the toll also reached 13; police there had made 31 arrests by the end of the month, among them three men suspected of supplying methanol.
Investigators still await the forensic and viscera results, three separate inquiries are continuing, and officials have not said the toll is final.