Patna & Siwan, Bihar: After spending his nights brewing alcohol on the banks of the Ganga river, M* spends his days selling it from behind a yellow saree that he uses as a curtain next to his paan shop in a crowded market in Patna.
Bihar, one of India's poorest states, is also supposedly dry, the manufacture, sale, storage and distribution of consumption of alcohol banned for nearly nine years.
The 28-year-old bootlegger transports the alcohol from the bank to the city in a boat every day.
When we met in January 2025, M said he was forced into a life of crime to support his family after authorities demolished their makeshift vegetable shop because he did not have a license to do business.
M, from the Musahar community of rat catchers, a scheduled caste, said that he could operate because the police, the bootleggers and their overlords were hand in glove with each other.
He often bribed police officials to look the other way.
“Our liquor business benefits the police equally,” said M. “If there’s police from a different region or an excise raid, the local police forewarns us.”
When he does not have the money and cannot make his bribe in time, M gets arrested until he can make bail.
Since he started bootlegging in 2016, M said that he had been arrested six times, and he was still no closer to finding any kind of economic stability and security for himself or his family.
“I have been selling alcohol for six years, but I am still in debt because of the cases and the police,” said M.
Bootleggers & Victims
After the latest tragedy involving alcohol poisoning in Bihar in October 2024—this one claiming the life of 35 people including 28 from Siwan district—Article 14 met 19 families of those who died or were blinded.
They were from the poor and marginalised Musahar and Chamar scheduled castes (SC) and the Kurmi and Lohar communities, classified as other backward classes (OBC), the same as most of those making the alcohol banned by chief minister Nitish Kumar’s government in April 2016.
The 19 families we met in Siwan (15 of them with a relative who died and four blinded by alcohol poisoning) were from the SC and OBC communities—nine SCs (eight from the Musahar caste) and six OBCs.
Two of the bootleggers who made the cheap country-made alcohol were from the Musahar community.
SCs account for 27.1% of arrests, while their population share is 16%. Scheduled tribes comprise 6.8% of those arrested but form only 1.3% of the population, the Indian Express reported in 2018, two years after the ban.
The OBC share was 34.4% of the arrests and 25% of Bihar’s population.
Poverty and unemployment forced them, they said, into this dangerous and illegal work, barely enough to survive. They continued, they added, to be poor.
The Real Reasons
Bihar’s labour force participation rate, the percentage of the working age population that is part of the labour force, is 34.5%, lower than the national average of 45.1%, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023-24.
The state's labour force participation rate is the lowest in the country.
Bihar is India's poorest large state with a per capita income close to Rs 50,000, according to 2023 Reserve Bank of India data, the latest available.
The latest poverty report from the government's think tank, the Niti Aayog, describes 33.76% of Bihar’s population as being “multidimensionally poor”—deprivations in health, education, and living standards—the highest of any state.
As the nexus between the alcohol mafia and the police deepens, they are trapped in the cycle of paying bribes to keep their small operations of making illicit alcohol going. However, the payoffs bring little sense of security, and they get arrested and jailed for short periods.
A*, a laborer from the southwestern district of Arwal in his forties who helps his wife make and sell country-made alcohol, said that members of his community [Musahars] have always manufactured and consumed alcohol as a part of their culture.
“We get arrested and released, but we can’t leave this work,” said A. “We do hard labor and need alcohol to sleep and get back to work the next day.”
Bihar’s Contested Alcohol Ban
While campaigning for the Assembly election in 2015, Nitish Kumar promised the measure if reelected, a move that aimed at women living in rural areas where the problem of men coming home drunk and beating up their wives was widely prevalent and acute.
They squandered the little money these women had to run the house and raise children.
Since the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, came into effect in April 2016, the illegal trade of alcohol has flourished, the Patna High Court has observed.
In November 2020, the Times of India quoted Bihar's deputy election commissioner, Chandra Bhushan Kumar, as saying 840,000 litres of liquor valued at Rs 25 crore were seized during the 2020 assembly polls, a “manifold increase” over the seizures in the 2015 assembly poll and the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
In October 2024, former deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav described the ban as a “super flop”.
“Due to the unholy nexus of ruling politicians-police and liquor mafia, a black market of illegal liquor worth more than 30 thousand crores has flourished in Bihar,” said Yadav.
Evading Checks
Bootleggers said they could evade checks by adding colours to recreate the exact hue in the branded bottles.
Two, who were brewers, said that sellers mixed chemical fertilisers and oxytocin injections, used to milch cattle, into the alcohol to increase its quantity and intoxication capability.
“While the cheaper country-made toxic liquor is consumed mostly by laborers mostly from the lower castes, the second [relatively expensive and safer branded alcohol] is a drink of those who have good money,” said M.
Despite the ban, according to the 2020 National Family Health Survey, at least 15.5% of men in Bihar consume alcohol. In 2015-16, this number was 29%.
As of April 2023, the official death toll from alcohol poisoning in the seven years since the law was passed was 199, with a further 70 dead of “suspected hooch poisoning”, the Indian Express reported on 18 April, citing a “10-page internal list of the Bihar police”.
Since then, at least 81 people have died after consuming adulterated alcohol in six incidents—including the 35 in Siwan—reported by the Hindu, Quint, India Today, Times of India, and Economic Times: 280 alcohol-related deaths in close to nine years.
Arguing that the alcohol ban could not be blamed for hooch deaths, Bijendra Prasad Yadav, JD(U) minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, in March 2022, said in the seven years from 2008 to 2015, when there was no ban in Bihar, there were 108 deaths due to consumption of spurious alcohol.
Deaths Double
Yadav’s data indicate that the average number of deaths from alcohol poisoning doubled from 15.4 a year from 2008 to 2015 to 31.1 every year from 2016 to 2025.
Sumit Kumar, head of medicine at the Government Medical College in Bettiah in the West Champaran district, north Bihar, said, “Most of the patients we get are from lower socio-economic strata who live hand to mouth.”
As criticism of the 2016 alcohol ban has grown because of multiple hooch related deaths, the increasing burden on the judiciary due to the rise in number of cases, and the disproportionate effect on marginalised communities,
Nitish Kumar’s government has defended the move, maintaining that the law saves women from domestic violence, a claim that was backed by a 2024 study in the Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal.
Of the 19 families we met, at least two women, partners of the deceased men, and one partner of a now-blind man said their drunk partners used to beat and abuse them.
The Lancet study, which used data from five national surveys to compare Bihar and its neighbouring states before and after the ban, estimated that the ban had prevented 1.8 million cases of obesity among males and over 2.1 million cases of domestic violence.
The Importance Of Women
The Patna High Court quashed a Bihar government notification on 30 September 2016, banning the consumption and sale of alcohol in the state.
A week later, the Supreme Court stayed the High Court order based on a plea from alcohol manufacturers.
The case is pending in the apex court.
As much as court proceedings, the alcohol issue is playing out in Bihar’s politics.
Nitish Kumar, the Janata Dal (United) leader, has stayed in power since the 2015 Assembly election, and a major reason for that, said observers, has probably been because he has courted the female vote.
Bihar has seen women vote more than men in every election in the last 15 years: in assembly elections in 2010, 2015 and 2020 and Lok Sabha elections in 2014, 2019 and 2024.
Nitish Kumar’s women-centric schemes—providing Rs 2,000 to buy bicycles and 50% reservation to women at the panchayat and local bodies’ level in 2006—brought women in larger numbers to vote for him in 2010 and 2015 after he promised to ban alcohol in the state.
After he came into power with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Nitish Kumar broke the alliance and formed the government with the BJP in 2017. In 2020, he fought the election in partnership with the BJP and then returned to the RJD in 2022. In January 2024, Nitish Kumar formed the government with the BJP.
While the ban has contributed to Nitish Kumar’s electoral success, it has led to the alcohol mafia flourishing in the state.
‘I Felt Left Behind’
K*, a 21-year-old who smuggles alcohol into Bihar, said he wanted to join the Indian army but changed his mind in 2022 after the union cabinet passed the controversial recruitment scheme for the army that offered a maximum of four years.
“I wanted to join the Indian army for dignified employment that offers even pride in death but was discouraged by the agniveer policy,” he said.
K said it took years to get into the army, and he did not want to waste his youth on a four-year contractual job.
Bihar witnessed large-scale violent protests by army aspirants after the scheme was announced.
A section of protesting aspirants said they were unhappy with the four-year short-term service requirement, the age limitation of 21, and the lack of pension provisions for those decommissioned early.
K, a Bhumihar, an upper caste, said he smuggled alcohol made by big brands on buses and earned a decent income from the trade.
The son of a small farmer, K said, “I felt left behind. Then, a friend told me he would help me double my money.”
On his first smuggling assignment in 2022, the railway police seized his consignment while returning to Bihar on a train from neighbouring Jharkhand.
“I don’t sell fake alcohol,” he said. “I will leave this trade once I get settled.”
‘Everyone Has A Fixed Cut’
Since 2016, the two types of alcohol sold in Bihar are country liquor, called desi daaru or Paua—sold in 220ml-250ml polythene packs—and locally made whiskey and rum bottled with fake labels of big brands like Blenders Pride, Royal Challenge, Royal Stag, and Imperial Blue.
Three bootleggers that Article 14 spoke to said that “original liquor” is smuggled via trucks from Haryana, but “most alcohol in circulation is adulterated” and is sold through a network of peddlers.
Alcohol was smuggled into Bihar in various vehicles, they said: specially modified bus compartments with aluminum foil to repel X-ray detection, vegetable trolleys, vans made to look like courier trucks or ATM vans, and even ambulances and hearses carrying coffins.
Country liquor costs Rs 250 to Rs 800 a litre, while duplicate-branded ones cost Rs 1300 to Rs 2500.
Two cars accompany the consignment vehicle, one usually a few kilometres ahead to check for police patrolling, said S*, an alcohol smuggler from the upper caste Bhumihar community. Three to four shabbily dressed women sit with a fake patient with saline drips when the shipment is in an ambulance.
“Alcohol for the bigger orders comes from outside the state,” he said. “From bus owners to conductors to drivers, everyone has a fixed cut.”
According to S, the manufacturing process for the branded alcohol requires criminals in different states to participate. The stickers and bottle caps come from Pune, and the spirits from Kolkata and Punjab. The alcohol is bottled and assembled in forest areas of Jharkhand.
S, who is well off and has invested money in other businesses like freehold property, said he wanted to start his manufacturing plant in Jharkhand next year to avoid middlemen cutting his profits.
‘Beating His Chest & Crying’
Jagdish Musahar, a 33-year-old construction worker, and his uncle, Dealer Musahar, fell victim to the hooch tragedy.
“I thought that he was a teetotaller,” said Kalawanti Devi, Jagdish Musahar’s mother, adding that Musahar confessed to drinking the hooch only when he started feeling pain in his chest the following day.
“Beating his chest and crying, he asked me to take him to the hospital,” said Kalawanti Devi.
Musahar died on the way to a private hospital in Chhapra, about 70 km away.
Musahar was survived by five children: three boys and two girls.
"How will we sustain?" asked Kalawanti Devi, pointing towards her sobbing daughter-in-law and grandchildren. "He left behind these five burdens—how will they survive?"
Musahar is one of eight—six men and two women—from the Musahar community who died that day due to alcohol poisoning in Musahartoli (the colony of Musahars), on the outskirts of Khairwa village in Siwan, where 300 families live.
Among the SCs, the Musahars are among the most marginalised: Only 0.18% of Musahars have completed a graduation degree in Bihar, compared to the state average of 7%.
The word Musahar combines Mus (mouse) and Ahars (food). They are said to eat rats and other rodents as a diet. Most of the houses in Jagdish’s colony are one-room shanties made of sarkanda (a type of grass) and bamboo.
‘…On The Wrong Side Of History’
In September 2024, Vinod Singh Gunjiyal, secretary of the state excise and registration department, said 843,907 cases were registered under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, and over 1.2 million people were arrested in Bihar between 1 April 2016 and 31 August 2024.
In 2024, the Bihar police arrested close to 300,000 people under the provisions of its alcohol prohibition law, according to the Prohibition Excise & Registration Department, cited by The Print.
In the 15 October incident, 99 people were arrested, and eight policemen were suspended.
In the context of the judicial backlog and the rise in bail petitions for crimes registered under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, the former chief justice of India, N V Ramanna, in December 2021 described the law as “short-sighted” and blamed it for burdening the judiciary with a growing number of cases.
Ruling on a writ petition of a police inspector who was demoted after being accused of participating in the illegal alcohol trade, Justice Purnendu Singh of the Patna High Court in October 2023 observed: “I find the liquor ban on the wrong side of history.”
Singh called the ban “draconian” and added, "Not only the police and excise officials, but also officers of the State Tax department and the transport department love liquor ban; for them, it means big money.”
Singh said the ban disproportionately targets the victims of alcohol poisoning and that “few” cases were registered against “the kingpin/syndicate operators” in comparison to the number of the cases registered against the poor who consume alcohol and those who “are prey to hooch tragedy”.
Singh added that the “majority” of those “facing the wrath of the Act were daily wagers who were the only earning members of their family”.
Lagan Musahar, a 75-year-old daily wage labourer from the scheduled caste Musahar community, used to work at construction sites and farms for a living.
His son, Muntun Musahar, a 56 year old daily wage labourer from Kherva village in Siwan District, said Lagan Musahar drank alcohol on his way home from work on 15 October.
Lagan Musahar died the next morning on the way to the hospital. The postmortem report said he died of Methanol poisoning.
“I have visited government offices multiple times and provided all the required documents but did not receive the promised compensation amount for the life of my father,” said Muntun Musahar.
No Compensation For The Blind
Gayesh Chandra, the excise superintendent of Siwan, on 2 March 2025, told Article 14 that the compensation for the 15 October tragedy had been processed. “23 out of the 28 deceased in Siwan have been compensated with Rs 4 lakh. “The remaining five”, he said, “have documentation issues.”
When asked about compensation for individuals who went blind as a result of alcohol poisoning, Chandra seemed surprised, inquiring, "Have people gone blind too?"
Keshav Kumar Jha, the excise superintendent of Saran, the district bordering Siwan to the southeast, said that all eight families of those who died as a result of alcohol poisoning in Saran have been compensated, and there is no government policy in Bihar to pay people who are blinded by alcohol poisoning.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar had announced, in April 2023, that Bihar would pay Rs 400,000 as compensation to the families of all those who have died from consuming poisonous alcohol in the state since 2016.
In the 15 October tragedy, the families of the victims were compensated in four months.
There is no compensation policy for those blinded by the spurious alcohol.
Blinded By Hooch
A few miles away from Musahartoli is a village called Maghar, home to Jay Shankar, a survivor of the 15 October Hooch tragedy.
Shankar said that he had a headache and blurry vision the following day, but he went to work anyway. In the next few hours, he could barely see anything.
The drink had blinded him.
“By now, I have spent around Rs 3 lakh on treatment without any improvement in my vision, and I am in an ocean of debt,” said Shankar. “The doctor says that my nerves are damaged.”
Shankar, 42, a hand pump boring operator, comes from the Lohar community that is classified under the OBC’s subcategory of extremely backward class (EBC).
He has five daughters and a son who is barely four.
He was the sole breadwinner for his family.
Article 14 met two people who had lost their vision entirely and two who had partially from drinking illicit alcohol.
“Methanol can cause irreversible blindness by damaging the optic nerve,” said Sudhir Kumar, head of ophthalmology at the Government Medical College in Bettiah, Bihar.
Shailesh Shah, a 42-year-old from the Maghar village in Siwan, who went partially blind after the October 15 hooch tragedy, said the only other option is "Frooty". This unadulterated drink, made from mahua and jaggery, costs Rs 200 for 250 ml, four times the cost of the spurious alcohol.
“I lost my friend and neighbor Mohan on 15 October,” Shah said, in tears. “He sold fish with me.”
Shah belongs to the Nishad community and used to sell fish for a living, earning Rs 300 per day. He is now unable to work and needs help with his daily tasks.
Maqbool Hashmi, a scrap vendor living a mile away in the village of Pokhapar, also lost his vision the same night.
In the month after the incident, Maqbool Hashmi, a scrap vendor living a mile away in the village of Pokharpar, became blind.
His family said that they could not get him treatment without any financial assistance.
His mother now sells biscuits, bangles, soap and other small items by street hawking to earn money for the family.
Hashmi said, “My future is ruined without my eyes.”
(Vipul Kumar is an independent journalist who reports on human rights, technology and social issues, and Alishan Jafri is a Delhi-based independent journalist and producer.)
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