The incident took place at Dongar Shivali village, 16 km from the district headquarters here on Sunday, when 13 villagers gathered together for their daily tipple. Police have detained at least a dozen of the 23 bootleggers operating liquor dens in the village, which has a population of about 7,000 people. Police suspect a collective conspiracy to sabotage the business of liquor don Raghunath Sonowane, whose outlet was the most frequented in the village.

The condition of the seven others who consumed the brew is still serious, doctors at the civil hospital here say. Special Inspector General of Police (Amravati), P K B Chakravorty, who rushed to the village on Monday morning, has suspended Police Inspector, Amrapur policestation, D K Patil, and Head Constable, Prakash Yayade, for their failure to check the bootlegging business in the area.

Ironically, Sonawane himself quaffed some of the killer brew and is also recuperating.

Tragedy struck on Sunday, when 12 people arrived at Sonawane's house for a round of drinks. Sonowane and the others drank two cans of hooch. When they returned home a couple of hours later, they began to vomit and grew so dehydrated that they could barely move. Word soon spread and a messenger went around the village beating a drum, shouting that anyone else who may have sipped the poisoned alcohol should rush to the civil hospital.But the poison had worked so rapidly that many could not even make it to the jeep that police patil, Madan Ingale had arranged. Six persons died about three hours after being admitted to hospital.

Villagers in this hamlet, comprising mainly farm labourers, told The Indian Express that the number of illicit liquor dens here is on the rise. In fact, police patil, Ingale,claims he has submitted several memoranda to the police on the bootleggers' activities in the village. He says at the last count, he had prepared a list of 23 persons in the trade but not a single raid had been conducted.

Though bootlegging is thriving, the earnings are actually quite meagre. In fact, most of those in the trade earn just enough to buy two square meals a day for their families, according to one of the villagers. Yet, the low investment required, often as little as Rs 100, lures people to the business. However, Sonowane's business had begun to boom, at least by the village's standards, and the other bootleggers had grown a trifle restive.The bootleggers here stash their 10-litre cans, which contain a mixture of jaggery, fruit pulp and a few drops of insecticide and pesticides, in their fields while the stuff ferments, fearing police raids. However, they often steal each others' cans and with the entire business itself illegal, the only thing they can do to get even is to steal their rivals'hooch.

Therefore with access to the brew easy, police believe a jealous bootlegger may have poured a heavy dose of pesticides into Sonowane's cans while they lay fermenting in the fields. Police say that more than the villagers' growing addiction and the queer chemicals used in the hooch, they were concerned with the increasing quarrels between the bootleggers here, which often turn violent.

The village sarpanch, Bhindu Sitaram Sawale, told The Indian Express that she plans to convene a meeting of the local Mahila Mandal to see whether they can contain the growing trade.

But Sawale, who was elected to the Gram Panchayat on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket but later switched to the Congress, says she is not sure what political sacrifice taking on the bootleggers in this poverty-striken village would entail for her. And with the support of just seven of the 11 Gram Panchayat members, she confides that she is loathe to finding out.