The death count due to consumption of spurious liquor in Gujarat's Bhavnagar district has gone up to eight, while 39 persons are currently undergoing treatment in , officials said on Thursday.
Thirteen bootleggers have been arrested so far in connection with the case and remanded in police custody till August 31, they said.
"The death toll in the spurious liquor case has risen to eight, with 39 persons under treatment at the government's Sir T Hospital and other private hospitals in the city," Sub Divisional Magistrate Akshar Vyas said.
Gujarat is a "dry" state where manufacturing, sale and consumption of alcohol is banned.
According to police, the victims consumed spurious liquor packed in duplicate bottles of a popular Indian-Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) brand.
One Raees, who is being identified as the "kingpin" of the spurious liquor case, has been detained from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh and is being interrogated, Superintendent of Police of State Monitoring Cell (SMC) Mayursinh Chavda told reporters.
The SMC has been handed over the investigation of the case.
One of the accused, Narendra Yadav, who hails from Madhya Pradesh, died after consuming the same spurious liquor that he was involved in manufacturing, he said.
The matter came to light after a person died following consumption of toxic, chemical-laced liquor at Kharakadi village under the Vartej police station limits. An FIR was subsequently registered, naming 21 individuals as accused, Chavda said.
Details of the blood sample of the persons who died showed the presence of methanol, the chemical mixed with ethanol and other chemicals to manufacture the spurious liquor at the house of one Gautam Solanki, an arrested accused, he said.
"The spurious liquor was produced at Solanki's house in Bhavnagar. The raw material came to Bhavnagar from other places. One Narendra Yadav, another accused, came from Madhya Pradesh for a day or two and was involved in the process of making liquor. He was the first to drink the spurious liquor, and died after its consumption," Chavda said.
SMC teams have also been sent to Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, from where the raw material was likely to have been supplied to Gujarat, according to him.
"Out of 13 accused who have been arrested, there are some who provided or ordered raw material and other items for manufacturing spurious liquor, some are involved in making liquor, and others who helped in distributing the bottles filled with spurious liquor," Chavda further said.
Prima facie, most of these accused indulged in the crime for financial gains, he said.
An SMC team detained Raees from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. He played a key role in manufacturing liquor of compromised quality while staying in different places at Bhavnagar and other parts of Gujarat for the last one and a half months, Chavda said.
"The movement of this accused in Gujarat, the people with whom he came in contact, and those from whom he procured material to make liquor are being probed by the police," he said.
"Raees is the kingpin. Apart from Bhavnagar, he visited different places in Gujarat. Raw material -- ethanol, methanol, essence -- came from different places," Chavda said.
In the last two days, the police have tried to find where the spurious liquor was manufactured and distributed, its supply chain and the people involved in this, the police official said.
A majority of the bottles containing spurious liquor have been seized by the SMC team, he said.
"Now the investigation is going on in the direction of where the bottle came from, where the forged sticker pasted on the bottles was printed and from where it was transported," he said.
An investigation is also underway to find out from where the bottle sealing equipment came and who supplied it, he said, adding that the accused were also involved in the destruction of evidence and their relatives also helped them.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
