Bootleg alcohol kills 143

BOOTLEG liquor containing toxic methanol killed 143 people and sickened dozens more who drank the cheap, illicit brew bought at small shops in eastern India.

Police have arrested 10 suspected bootleggers.

Emergency medical teams rushed to the village outside Kolkata, and thousands of relatives, many of them wailing in grief, gathered outside the packed hospital. Inside, dead bodies lay on the floor covered in quilts, while the ill waited on staircases to be treated. Illegal liquor operations flourish in the slums of urban India and among the rural poor. Victims began vomiting, suffering piercing headaches and frothing at the mouth.