Mumbai hooch toll reaches 102

The toll in Mumbai's worst hooch tragedy rose to 102 on Monday with the death of five more victims, who consumed spurious liquor in the Malad area. Another 46 victims are in hospitals with eight of them struggling to survive serious ill-effects of the killer brew.

Blaming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government for the tragedy, Opposition Congress asked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to step down owning moral responsibility and demanded a CBI inquiry into it.

So far, seven persons have been arrested in the case and eight police and four excise officials suspended.

Stepping up the heat, Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam said, "The excise minister should take responsibility of the tragedy and quit."

Lamenting that the state does not have a full-fledged home minister, he said when the death toll was increasing on an hourly basis, the chief minister was busy doing yoga.

"Since the onus for the death of over 100 people lay at the chief minister's doorstep, he should resign," he said.

He said when a similar tragedy happened in Vikhroli in 2004, claiming over 87 lives, the then Congress-NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) government had suspended the local DCP and raided and shut illegal distillaries across Mumbai. After the BJP-led government came to power, the spurious liquor trade had flourished and there were about 1,000 hooch dens, he alleged.