The whopping rise in jaggery prices eventually resulted in the hooch tragedy that claimed the life of more than 100 people.
Believe it or not, but the whopping rise in jaggery prices eventually resulted in the hooch tragedy that claimed the life of more than 100 people in the city.
The increased input cost of making country-made liquor decreased the profit margins of bootleggers who turned to methanol to arrest their declining profit.
Many liquor manufacturing units at Mahemdabad had to down their shutters after the input costs almost doubled since the last one year.
The price of jaggery — the main ingredient in country — made liquor has doubled since the last one year. Apart from jaggery, alum and black pepper powder is used to manufacture the booze.
“It was sold at Rs15 per kg till last year, but now the jaggery costs Rs30 per kg,” president of Ahmedabad Jaggery Association, Madhavpura, Jagdish Thakker told DNA.
Thakker said that jaggery production units in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra has been badly hit due to the delayed monsoon. This resulted in drastic fall in production. This fall in production led to rise in price like never before.
A bootlegger in Mahemdabad told DNA that it costs a lot to bring jaggery from Madhavpura to Mahemdabad. The jaggery was then used in the manufacture of country-made liquor.
“The jaggery cost and the cost of transporting it to Mahemdabad affected the input cost of country made liquor,” he said. As the input cost increased, the price of country made liquor too rose from Rs14 per litre to Rs18 per litre. But by the time it was sold in Ahmedabad it cost Rs50 per litre for, the bootleggers had to take into consideration the hafta paid to the cops.
“If we add more water to it, the customers don’t prefer it and so to maintain the quality we had to up the price. But this in turn reduced the consumption,” a bootlegger in Majoor Gaam told DNA.
“As a result to maintain the profit margin, bootleggers like Vinod Chauhan alias Dagli and Yogendrasinh Chauhan alias Daddu Chhara must have decided to use methanol,” a former bootlegger of from Ahmedabad told DNA.
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