PALAKKAD: The death of five tribal persons from the Chelankad colony near Kanjikode after consuming illicit liquor has exposed the inability of the excise department to track the district’s vulnerable pockets which lack awareness on the toxic nature of the brew distilled from local stuff. Excise officials continued to grope in the dark with regard to the brew’s origin.
One of the deceased, Sivan, 37, had brought the illicit liquor to the Chelankad tribal colony where all of them sat and drank it together. The head of the hamlet, Viswanathan, also confirmed this. It is suspected that sanitiser too was mixed with the spurious liquor. Sivan, a daily wage earner, was the third person to die, after Raman and Ayyappan. Sivan was found dead in the thatched hut on Monday morning.