At least 49 people in the Siberian city of Irkutsk have died after drinking bath essence laced with a toxic alcohol.
Abuse of cheap “surrogate” alcohols such as perfume, anti-freeze and medicines is rife in Russia, but this poisoning was one of the worst cases for years.
The victims had bought the liquid from markets. The label included a warning not to drink it. Instead of containing the usual ethanol, the fatal batch contained methanol, which is highly poisonous.
Prosecutors said that 49 victims out of 57 who were admitted to hospital died after consuming a toxic batch of Boyaryshnik, a hawthorn extract added to bathwater as a relaxant.
Manufacturers of such liquids have been accused of tacitly accepting their abuse by making them available in vending machines and boasting of their saleability because of “hard times”.
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Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister, said that the availability of surrogate alcohols from such machines “must be stopped, the sale of these kind of substances must simply be banned”.
The regional investigative committee said that it had detained two people for distributing the bath essence. The authorities have confiscated 2,000 bottles of the product.