KANPUR: Four persons died and more than a dozen other fell seriously ill after allegedly consuming spurious liquor purchased from a registered country-made liquor shop at village Dulgaon under the limits of Sachendi police station in the Kanpur district of UP on Saturday morning.Police sources said that the deceased were identified as Rajendra Kamal, Umesh Shukla, Ratnesh Shukla and Umesh Chandra. "The treatment of more than a dozen other villagers who had fallen ill after consuming liquor with the four is under way at Lala Lajpat Rai hospital and other government and private hospitals," sources said, adding the salesman and the contractor of the registered country-made liquor shop were reported to be absconding.Sources said that the deaths took place since early morning hours of Saturday. The victims, who had allegedly consumed liquor purchased from a registered country-made liquor shop on late Friday night were found to be vomiting and suffering from nausea and several others ailments on Saturday morning. "Going by the preliminary statements of the family members of the deceased, the symptoms of the deceased were similar to those of consuming poisonous liquor," said a senior excise official supervising the situation at LLR hospital.Meanwhile, district magistrate Surendra Singh, who along with SSP Akhilesh Kumar Meena and excise officials visited the Dulgaon village, said that investigations are on to know what had resulted in the death of the four villagers. "Samples of liquor were collected from the country-made liquor shop and sent for laboratory test," he said.He also said that the post-mortem report of the four persons is awaited. "Only after the post-mortem report, the reasons of the suspicious deaths could be known," DM added.However, the situation in the village was tense and huge deployment of police and PAC has been made to avoid any kind of backlash.In the wake of tragedy, teams of district excise department collected samples of liquor from registered country-made liquor shops from across the district.A senior official said excise teams have been formed and are collecting samples from liquor shops at far flung places in the district.He said that search was also being conducted at several localities from where spurious liquor was caught before. To recall here, a farmer had died in the Sachendi area after allegedly consuming spurious liquor on the month of January 2018.Police had then claimed to arrested a woman for allegedly selling illicit liquor.

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