Saran/Siwan/Patna (Bihar): By the evening of December 13, Satyendra Mahto had sensed that something was wrong with his eyes. He was serving food to guests at a wedding in his village, Bahrauli in Bihar’s Saran district.;  A white bulb was on, and the light felt as though it were piercing through his eyes like a sharp nail. He was also experiencing a growing sense of unease. He managed to compose himself for a while, then returned home and went to sleep.

Late that night, a commotion broke out in the village. People were reportedly dying after consuming alcohol. “My wife woke me up and asked if I, too, had consumed any alcohol. I lied that I hadn’t drunk anything at all, and went back to sleep,” says 32-year-old Satyendra, recounting the events of 2022.

A migrant labourer, Satyendra worked as a construction worker in Bengaluru; he had returned to his village in the last week of November 2022 to attend his neighbour’s wedding.

On the morning of December 11, he had consumed illicit liquor along with his friends. The very next day, he drank alcohol once again. The effects of the liquor he had consumed began to manifest on December 13.

On the morning of December 14, while returning from his morning ablutions, he vomited once, and his vision began to blur. “It was so blurry that, while riding my bicycle back, I narrowly avoided crashing into things on three or four occasions,” he recounts, sitting on his coat in the April summer.

By then, news of people dying after consuming alcohol had spread throughout the entire region. His family members asked him once again if he, too, had consumed any liquor. He lied once again. However, his health was gradually deteriorating; he was losing his eyesight. When he informed his family about this, they first took him to the local government hospital for treatment. As there were no adequate facilities there, he was subsequently taken to the Sadar Hospital, Saran at 5 pm. He was kept there for two hours. Two hours later, he vomited, and immediately thereafter, he lost his vision completely. The toxic liquor had destroyed his eyes; he had become visually impaired.

Satyendra, a Nonia by caste, which falls under Extremely Backward Classes (EBC), was not the only person to suffer visual impairment during that incident in December 2022. According to a media report, a total of 25 people lost their eyesight after consuming toxic liquor.

Prohibition – and an unseen impact

During the 2015 state assembly election campaign, while addressing women, then chief minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar promised that if his government were formed, a prohibition law banning alcohol would be introduced in the state. He won the 2015 elections, and just five months after his victory, he implemented a complete alcohol prohibition law in Bihar.

With the enactment of this law, the consumption, trade and manufacturing of alcohol became a criminal offence.

As a consequence of the law, a parallel illicit liquor trade gathered steam.

Since the liquor is produced illegally, it is not subject to any quality control checks; consequently, its consumption carries significant risks. The production of country liquor typically involves the use of mahua flowers, jaggery, and naushadar (ammonium chloride), while regulated alcohols are made of grains (barley, corn, rye), fruits (grapes, apples), or sugarcane/molasses. In both, the ingredients are fermented and then distilled. According to experts, disproportionate or inconsistent quantities of these raw materials can result in the generation of ethyl alcohol and methyl alcohol; the latter is lethal and can cause permanent blindness.

Since the implementation of the alcohol prohibition law in Bihar, numerous incidents have been reported in which individuals have lost their eyes due to the consumption of toxic liquor. The Bihar government does not keep data on blindness due to liquor consumption. The first major incident involving deaths and blindness caused by the consumption of poisonous liquor occurred in August 2016 – merely four months after the implementation of the prohibition law – in Khajurbani, Gopalganj. In this tragedy, 19 people lost their lives, and six people lost their eyesight. The Gopalganj Excise Court sentenced nine men to death and four women to life imprisonment.

In November 2021, two people in Gopalganj lost their eyesight after consuming poisonous liquor. In August 2022, poisonous liquor blinded 17 people in the Saran district.

In 2024, poisonous liquor claimed the eyesight of two people in the Siwan district. That same year, in Muzaffarpur as well, poisonous liquor left two people blind. In October 2024, more than a half dozen people were blinded due to spurious liquor consumption. In April this year, six people in Motihari lost their eyesight after consuming poisonous liquor.

An unprepared health system and fear of police action

Experts opine that it is the ineffective prohibition law alone that is causing people to go blind. Due to the unavailability of essential medicines in district-level government hospitals, patients are unable to receive medication at critical moments, causing their condition to become extremely precarious. Additionally, fear of police action triggers liquor victims to avoid government hospitals and crucial hours pass without proper treatment.

Ultimately, these patients are referred from these district-level hospitals to hospitals in the state capital; however, by then, it is often too late and they become visually disabled.

Dr D. Kumar, a Patna-based neurologist and eye specialist, says, “During distillation, both ethyl alcohol or ethanol and methyl alcohol or methanol are produced. During quality check, if found that methyl alcohol is in high proportion, it is removed from distilled liquor before it goes to market. I guess after distillation of liquor no quality check is done [in the prohibited liquor production]........

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