Stripped of ministry: Sindh minister penalised over toxic liquor deaths

At least 20 people died in Hyderabad after consuming toxic brew

KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)-led Sindh government withdrew the portfolio of excise and taxation from its minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla on Sunday over what the party’s senior leadership termed “the minister’s negligence in issuing licences to substandard wine shops in Hyderabad” that led to death of around 20 people in the last five days.

The notification for taking back the portfolio from Chawla was issued on the directives of Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah despite Sunday being a work holiday. The excise and taxation ministry will now be looked after by Minister for Forests and Wildlife Gyan Chand Asrani.

“The investigations had established that he [Chawla] started issuing the liquor permits without even directing the officials under his ministry to visit the shops and carry out regular inspections,” said a senior PPP leader as well as the Chief Minister’s aide when approached by The Express Tribune.

The 40-year-old Jacobabad-born politician is presently residing in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority and had been in the good books of PPP leadership for over a decade. He was offered a seat reserved for minorities in the Sindh Assembly during the last three general elections and had been serving as the excise and taxation minister for around six and a half years.

Even last year, Chief Minister Shah had taken back the portfolio from Chawla while replacing it with industries through a notification issued on March 5, 2013, but it was withdrawn in a matter of hours for unspecified reasons.

During Chawla’s tenure as the minister, the Sindh government issued more licences to the liquor shops than were issued by preceding governments over the past 60 years, sources in the office of the excise and taxation director general told The Express Tribune.

Meanwhile, excise and taxation department’s secretary, Abdul Majeed Pathan, said that the regional excise and taxation director, Agha Abdur Rehman, had also been removed from the office over deaths in Hyderabad. “Our intelligence team will map out the toxic liquor sales locations and this will be followed by a province-wide crackdown,” added Pathan.

Liquor deaths

The Hyderabad police confirmed on Sunday the death of 20 people due to consumption of moonshine liquor over the last week. The unconfirmed number is assumed to be almost twice. None of these deaths, however, were referred for postmortem to the medico legal officers. The SP Qasimabad and Rural tehsils, Haider Raza, told The Express Tribune that the police have now written to the MLOs to conduct postmortem of the deceased who show liquor symptoms.

The DIG Hyderabad Dr Sanaullah Abbassi posted out of district around 48 policemen, mostly from the special branch, as a punishment, he told The Express Tribune. Some of them were also reverted to the lower pay grade. Some local level political workers were also involved in the sale of illegally distilled liquor and other narcotics and doctors were being pressured to declare these deaths as natural, he added.

The crackdown against the liquor sale has been launched across the police Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas police range. Around two dozen FIRs have been lodged in Hyderabad district alone.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2014.