Hooch tragedy accounts for a lot more deaths than the Gujarat state government has registered.
If one thought the staggering death toll rising every hour is shocking for the city, the bigger shock is that this figure seems to be highly understated.
DNA discovered on Wednesday that the actual death toll is much higher as several more deaths have occurred because of hooch consumption in the city over the past two days, but not registered with the police.
DNA came across families of another two deceased, whose deaths are not included in the death toll mentioned above. The kin conceded their son died because of hooch consumption on Sunday, but have not registered his death with the police as they do not want adverse attention.
One of the victims, 32-year-old Lalit Panchal, was an educated carpenter, with a 10-yr-old son. He was working with a bootlegger, Harish Bhaiya.
While politicians in Odhav pounced on the opportunity to stoke passions in moment of weakness, onlookers, neighbours of the victims and even passersby nonchalantly said, "Oh, many more die regularly. Police know about it and no one even yawns. The cause of deaths is passed off as other diseases."
A retired doctor of Civil Hospital, practising as general practitioner in Odhav gaam made a shocking revelation. "Very often, a few dead bodies would be emptied in the morning along with other trash of the city in a pile, brought by the regular trash van in the Civil Hospital compound. When bodies were detected and brought for postmortem, strict instructions were given by superiors to put a cross on their bodies and 'let them go' (not conduct a postmortem or register the death). We would have done this on thousands of bodies over the past 20 years. All these people had died because of excessive consumption of hooch," he said.
This is the value of human life in Gujarat. As police threatened to resort to a lathicharge near Odhav fire station on Wednesday to control a crowd gathered by Congressmen, a garage owner Hitendra Rajput watching the scene said with a sardonic smile, "These cops with lathis in their hands right now are the ones regularly hanging out with bootleggers and openly collecting hafta. In fact, they even exhort some labourers to drink at times."
When asked that since such deaths are commonplace, what happens to the widows and families of such deceased, he said with a deadpan, "They move on. Widows turn to prostitution; we have several child labourers all over the city. They obviously survive. Need you ask?"
(Jumana Shah & Roxy Gagdekar contributed to this report)
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