Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 16: A plea was submitted to the Supreme Court on Friday asking for an impartial SIT investigation into the Bihar hooch tragedy, which has already claimed 50 lives.
Today, the petition was brought up for an immediate hearing before the bench presided over by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud. The matter was not listed, so the bench declined to hear it.
“If it’s so important, you should have listed. However important the matter is, discipline in my court. Sorry,” CJI Chandrachud said.
The Aryavarta Mahasabha Foundation requested, through attorney Pawan Prakash Pathak, that a national action plan be created to stop the production, distribution, and sale of illegal alcohol. As a result of the State government’s inaction and the breached and jeopardised rights of the people, the PIL also asked for guidance on how to fairly recompense the relatives of the victims.
“Pass direction that the independent Special Investigation Team may be formed by the respondent and an independent probe be conducted in this hooch tragedy for effective steps as per the law of the land,” the plea stated.
The PIL continued by stating that since the Bihar government forbade the sale of alcohol in the state in 2016, it has come under fire for failing miserably to put the ban into effect and for the numerous negative effects the decision has had on the Bihar people.
There is evidence that alcohol is being imported into Bihar from its neighbouring states, given the extraordinary growth in excise income in West Bengal and Jharkhand, which border the state along with Nepal, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh. None of these governments practise prohibition.
The plea argued that the state’s prohibition stance has come under increasing criticism as a result of numerous hooch catastrophes that have left scores of people dead.
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The same issue was recently brought up in Lok Sabha and addressed, but the petition claimed that no concrete efforts are being taken to reduce the threat posed by the cartels and liquor mafia that control the industry.
According to the PIL, India has already documented incidents of people passing away after eating fake alcohol. In recent years, similar occurrences that resulted in fatalities were reported from Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka, it noted.
