Mourners gathered under an ash-colored sky Monday outside Sathivel Nagakounder’s one-room house, the women wailing and wiping their eyes with their saris. His body was wreathed in garlands, wrapped in a snow-white shroud and carried through dirt lanes still soft from the morning rain.
In the northern Mumbai slum of Kharodi, the people have lost count of the funeral processions. More than 100 people have died since last week from drinking a toxic batch of homemade liquor, one of the worst such incidents in India in recent years, with dozens more still hospitalized.
Officials say the victims suffered poisoning by methanol, a cheap alcohol that bootleggers add to provide a kick, but which can be lethal in all but the smallest quantities.