DIAMOND HARBOUR, India ? Police raided illegal distilleries and dismantled dozens of liquor dens Friday across an eastern Indian district where 162 people died after drinking methanol-tainted bootleg alcohol.
Twelve people were arrested in connection with making and distributing the cheap, illicit liquor, but police were still searching for the kingpin of the operation, District Magistrate Naraya Swarup Nigam said.
Many of the victims were day laborers, street hawkers and rickshaw drivers who gathered along a road near a railway station after work Tuesday to drink the booze they bought for 10 rupees (20 cents) a half liter, less than a third the price of legal alcohol.
They later began vomiting, suffering piercing headaches and frothing at the mouth, and by Friday morning 162 had died, Nigam said.
About 90 others, some in critical condition, were hospitalized in Diamond Harbour village for treatment. Doctors and other medical staff were working overtime to help.
Many homes had at least one victim in the nearby village of Sangrampur, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Kolkata, the city formerly known as Calcutta.
Angry villagers ransacked some booze shacks, and police were tearing down others. West Bengal state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered an inquiry and promised a crackdown.
Illegal liquor operations flourish in India's urban slums and among the rural poor who can't afford alcohol at state-sanctioned shops.
Despite religious and cultural taboos against drinking among Indians, an estimated 5 percent ? roughly 60 million people ? are alcoholics. Two-thirds of the alcohol consumed in the country is illegal homemade hooch or undocumented smuggled liquor, according to The Lancet medical journal.
Bootleggers, often working in homes, hidden warehouses and even in forests, can turn a liter of genuine alcohol into 1,000 liters of bootlegged swill with chemicals and additives that usually cause no harm. However, sometimes it is mixed with cheap, toxic chemicals to increase potency and profit, with deadly consequences.
One or two people die each week from tainted liquor in India, according to the Indian Alcohol Policy Alliance, which fights alcohol-related problems. In 2009, at least 112 people died from toxic alcohol in western India.
Drinking alcohol contains ethanol, whereas highly toxic methanol ? a clear liquid that can be used as fuel, solvent or antifreeze ? can induce comas and cause blindness and is deadly in high doses.
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