A gathering in Bhavnagar district on August 16 turned fatal after those present allegedly drank spurious liquor sold in counterfeit Royal Stag bottles, laced with industrial methanol. Within days the toll had climbed and dozens more were hospitalised, some in critical condition. Two hundred kilometres away, Ahmedabad’s police registered 215 prohibition cases in the next two days, up from 69 in the two days before, a 212% jump, according to Vibes of India.
What the numbers show
Arrests rose from 67 to 244, up 264%. Seized liquor went from 355 litres to 1,941 litres, up 447%. Confiscated beer cans jumped from 380 to nearly 10,900, a rise of more than 2,700%. Police say the two-day haul on August 18-19 alone was worth roughly ₹1.04 crore, split between country-made and foreign liquor seizures. City police leadership reportedly ordered intensified night checks and searches the moment news of the Bhavnagar deaths spread, treating liquor networks that had operated with little visible interference until then as an urgent citywide threat.
That timing sits at the centre of a wider criticism of how Gujarat’s prohibition enforcement actually works. The illegal liquor trade these raids targeted did not appear overnight: Gujarat has enforced statutory prohibition since 1960, and its liquor black market is a known, longstanding feature of daily life in most cities. What changed on August 18 was the political cost of leaving that trade alone.
A familiar script
An analysis published by Gujarat Samachar lays out a recurring pattern: a catastrophic failure of oversight costs lives, public anger builds, and authorities respond with a visible burst of bans and raids, before enforcement quietly tapers off in the following weeks. The piece names a string of past incidents that followed the same arc: the Rajkot TRP Game Zone fire in May 2024 that killed at least 28 people, the Harni Lake boat capsize in Vadodara in January 2024 that killed 14, mostly schoolchildren, and last year’s Deesa firecracker godown blast that killed 21. In each case, it notes, disciplinary action fell mainly on lower-level field staff. The department heads and municipal officials responsible for ongoing oversight rarely faced consequences.
What it means for Gujarat residents
A liquor supply chain capable of producing a mass-poisoning event does not spring up in two days. It survives, day to day, on some mix of under-resourced local policing, corruption, and simple deprioritisation, and that survival happens between tragedies, not during them. A short, intense crackdown that recedes once headlines move on does not close that gap; it shifts its location and timing until the next incident. Ahmedabad residents are left dependent on the state’s reactive attention rather than the sustained, unglamorous, everyday enforcement that would actually cut the odds of another methanol-laced batch reaching a village gathering.
Outlook
The Bhavnagar investigation is ongoing, and further arrests and supply-chain tracing are likely in the coming weeks. The real test for Gujarat’s administration is whether Ahmedabad’s current enforcement intensity survives the news cycle, or whether case numbers quietly drift back toward pre-tragedy levels once public attention moves elsewhere, as they reportedly have after previous incidents.
Sources: Vibes of India, Gujarat Samachar
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.