Agitated residents set West Delhi police booth on fire over hooch deaths

New Delhi, Apr 6 (ANI): A group of people shouted slogans and set objects on fire outside a police booth in the Rajouri Garden area of West Delhi on Monday to express their rage on the deaths, which have taken place due to consumption of contaminated alcohol.

According to media reports, at least 15 deaths have taken place in West Delhi due to spurious alcohol. The deceased include poor rickshaw pullers and labourers.

Residents were agitated to notice that the local policemen haven't shown any pro-active action against bootleggers who are enjoying selling spurious liquor in the area without any fear of authorities.

Rekha, a victim's wife, claimed that her husband died after consuming contaminated liquor. "He drank at night, I don't know from where. In the morning he was in a bad condition."

Relatives of the other victims were agitated to find no strict action being taken against the culprit spurious liquor sellers.

However, Police claimed to have raided several areas of the capital recently and also in Haryana State in connection to the incident, after learning about the deaths.

Police also claimed that public awareness campaigns against consumption of fake liquor have been launched.

"Following several such incidents, we have started creating public awareness campaigns to spread the message that they should not consume such kind of illegal alcohol because it is contaminated and they should buy alcohol from authorized vendors." said Sharad Aggarwal, District Commissioner of Police, West Delhi.

"We have created pressure bootleggers as well. A few of them ran. We are taking legal action against the people from whom contaminated alcohol was recovered, " he added. (ANI)