Bhavnagar hooch tragedy chargesheet runs past 1 lakh pages; police turn to USB drives

The chargesheet in the Bhavnagar spurious liquor case runs to more than one lakh pages, and the Gujarat Police have turned to USB drives to hand it over, The Indian Express reported on 7 November.

Printing a full copy for each accused would have meant lakhs of pages. Under the new criminal procedure law, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, documents may be supplied to the accused in electronic form, so the police are giving copies on USB drives.

The background

The tragedy struck Bhavnagar district in August 2026. Spurious liquor, packed in fake bottles of a popular Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) brand, killed 13 people and left dozens more in hospital, some of them critical. Investigators said the bottles were believed to have come from Madhya Pradesh. Police registered a case against 21 people and had arrested 27 by the end of August.

Gujarat has banned the sale of liquor since it became a State in 1960, but illicit and smuggled liquor remains widely available, and deaths from toxic liquor recur. In July 2022, 42 people died after drinking spurious liquor laced with methanol in Botad and Ahmedabad districts.

What’s next

With the chargesheet filed, the case moves to trial. The length of the record means the proceedings are likely to take a long time.