A man took on a bet of drinking five bottles of liquor without diluting it in a bid to win ₹10,000. However, the bet tragically cost him his life.
The incident happened in Karnataka, where 21-year-old Karthik flexed in front of his friends that he could drink as much as five bottles of undiluted liquor, reported NDTV.
Karthik’s friends have been identified as Venkata Reddy, Subramani. Out of them, Venkata Reddy challenged Karthik that he would give him ₹10,000 if he could follow through on his boast, the report added.
To prove his point, Karthik drank five bottles of neat liquor. However, he became critically ill soon after and was admitted to a hospital in Mulbagal in Karnataka’s Kolar district. He died while undergoing treatment at the hospital, the NDTV report said.
Karthik had gotten married a year back and had become a father just eight days before the tragedy.
The police have registered a case at Nangali police station against six people and have arrested Venkata Reddy and Subramani so far. Search for the other accused is going on.
Alcohol deaths
According to the World Health Organisation, alcohol consumption in whatever quantity is bad for health. Every year, as many as 2.6 million people lose their lives to alcohol globally. Also, harmful use of alcohol is responsible for 4.7% of the global burden of disease.
Alcohol is also the leading risk factor for premature mortality and disability among those aged 20 to 39 years, accounting for 13% of all deaths in this age group, says the WHO.
There is no safe amount of alcohol consumption that would not affect health, according to the WHO. “We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,” says Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe.