E-Paper
Families of Kallakurichi victims shattered, question availability of hooch
Almost every street held a funeral while several bodies were lined up for cremation in Karunapuram, which is at the center of the hooch tragedy in Kallakurichi district of Tamil Nadu.
Almost every street held a funeral while several bodies were lined up for cremation in Karunapuram, which is at the center of the hooch tragedy in Kallakurichi district of Tamil Nadu.
Of the 38 victims, at least 19 of them died from the locality after consuming spurious liquor sold in packets on Tuesday night.
Three teenage siblings —Kokila, Harish, and Raghavan — were orphaned overnight after they lost their parents R Suresh and S Vadivukarasi to the tragedy.
Their father, a painter, bought the illicit liquor in a packet and emptied it onto a tumbler and drank some. The mother, a construction worker, mistook it to be water and drank it as well. She is among the four women who have died.
“My mother mistook it for some water and drank the leftover,” said 16-year-old S Kokila. “My mother didn’t have a drinking habit. Only my father did.”
The siblings went to school on Wednesday and got back home to learn about the death of their parents from television news. The siblings are now left with their 63-year-old grandmother.
They are among the several children and family members who have been grieving inconsolably for more than a day. Visuals of a girl crying over her father’s body went viral on social media in one of the worst hooch tragedies in Tamil Nadu.
The victims are daily wage workers such as painters and coolies. The deceased include four women and a trans person. “I lost two of my relatives — Suresh and Praveen — in the tragedy,” Arumugam, their relative said. “Both of them have children. Who will take care of them? Who is answerable to our family? Who will help them with their education and how will the children ever come out of this tragedy?” he asked.
Kavitha, a 33-year-old who lost her husband, said that her spouse drank regularly. “He consumed illicit liquor only because it was available so freely,” she said. Several women here blamed the government and the complicity of officials which allowed the spurious liquor to be sold. One of the arrested accused manufactured and sold illicit liquor in packets within the Karunapuram village.
R Chitra, wife of a victim named Ravi, also said that her husband drank regularly. “On Tuesday, he came home at 5 in the evening after drinking and complained of pain,” she said. “He started vomiting the next morning and he began losing his vision. I took him to a private hospital. Suddenly he became breathless and we had to rush him to the government hospital where he died. The doctors asked him if he drank the spurious liquor because by then seven people had died but he didn’t want to reveal anything in front of me, so he had kept quiet.”
