HOOCH TRAGEDY IN KALLAKURICHI: COST OF TN GOVT'S INACTION

A carpet of crushed flowers on the village road leading to Karunapuram Kallakurichi is an intense allegory of an institutional homicide.

- ANTO JOSEPH

Funeral wails, stifled sobs, and a pungent odour of methyl alcohol mixed with the whiff of burning incense sticks continue to swamp the otherwise sleepy settlement. 56 deaths in five days! Most of the earning members in the village, all daily-wage workers, have fallen prey to the killer brew, rendering scores of kids orphans overnight.

Hooch flows as freely as the Manimuktha River in Kallakurichi. This district is among the most backward in Tamil Nadu. In the evening, the people in Karunapuram, mostly Dalits, keenly await their daily dose of hooch, by squireling away half of their daily earnings. For years, bike-borne youngsters have been frequenting the village to sell the drink in plastic packets for as cheap as ₹60 for 200 ml. No comparison there with the prices of local liquor offered by the neighbourhood Tasmac outlet. At the beginning of the street, two police stations, including an all-women police station, stand mute spectators to the booming sale of illicit liquor at dusk.